


Around The World In 80 Nopes

by CollidingScope



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur is specifically a general disaster of a human being, Arthur's wardrobe is the cause of everything, Eames is just trying to do his job, Humor, L.A means Columbo references obvs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26014681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollidingScope/pseuds/CollidingScope
Summary: Cobb had a fair idea why Arthur didn’t want to work with Eames on the inception job.He’d seen things. They all had.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 218





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rotterdam

Cobb had a fair idea why Arthur didn’t want to work with Eames on the inception job.

He’d never asked outright, but he was pretty confident in his guesswork. _He’d seen things._ He and Mal both. Through binoculars on a job in Rotterdam a year before she died, back when things were relatively normal- or as normal as they got working in dream theft.

He was kind of embarrassed, them both on a low roof across the street, watching it happen, like voyeurs but ones who had been involuntarily forced to spy on events that they had no business seeing. And it was the sheer silly audacity of the situation really, because these things only happened in romance novels, in teen movies, in the imagination. (Okay he acknowledged that last one wasn’t something he could criticise, but still.) One moment he could see Arthur and Eames in the alleyway outside a nightclub breaking into the power box of the building they were staking out, when a pair of the mark’s security suddenly emerged out of a back door. Then the next moment, rather than shoot them and risk drawing down a whole lot of further heat, Eames honest to God went for the old ‘just two folks who’ve stepped out for a bit of privacy because their respective apartments/hotels/cars were just too far away’ ploy.

Cobb gave it about a 5% chance of success, because he knew his point man very well and if there was one thing Arthur did not excel at it was going with the flow. And when the flow was a sartorially unkempt, stubbly Englishman deciding to maul you with his mouth like it was going out of style that percentage was probably generous.

“Uhm…”

Cobb tore his eyes away for a moment to agree with Mal. He wasn’t at the stage where he could vocalise yet, so he settled for a wince.

When he reluctantly fitted the binoculars back against his eyes _it was still going on_. Eames had pressed Arthur up against the wall and had hold of his jacket collar, which, why had nobody warned him about touching Arthur’s clothes like that? Should Cobb have said something before this point? He felt like it was just common knowledge; like the Earth going round the sun or cheese out of a tube being a terrible idea. Arthur sporadically dated a stream of elegant, sophisticated, interesting women and sometimes Cobb joined them for dinner in high class restaurants or for weekends in one of Arthur’s cabins, but he was ultimately in a deeply committed relationship with his wardrobe and woe betide anyone who tried to get between them. And boy was that woe going to betide all over the forger if he ever detached his mouth and Arthur got his hands on his weapon.

Cobb blinked and shook that thought right out of his head, because normal sentences were beginning to sound wildly inappropriate.

Arthur was stiff as a board, projecting discomfort so loudly Cobb could feel it an entire building away.

“Shit.”

“He needs to relax and go with it.”

“I know that Mal, but…” Cobb waved a useless hand at the painful display in front of them.

“Maybe I should shoot them?”

“Shoot Eames? God no….no?”

Mal dropped her own binoculars from her eyes and huffed. “The men, Dom. The men about to interrupt Romeo and the world’s worst Juliet.”

“Oh.” Cobb considered it. “Do you think you’ll make the shot?”

She sighed “The line of sight’s awful, so probably not without drawing attention to us both.”

“Shit. Come on Arthur, get your head in the game.”

Mal chuckled. “What he needs to do is get his head _out_ of the game and get his…”

Cobb raised a warning finger “I love you but don’t finish that sentence, I beg of you.”

It seemed as though maybe Eames was having exactly the same thought because he did indeed pull back for a moment and tilt his head, so his mouth was now next to the point man’s ear.

“I doubt very much that they’re sweet nothings he’s whispering” Mal said.

“Pep talk. Or just a good old fashioned bollocking. But yeah, nothing good.” The only thing worse than giving Arthur advice about how to do his job was criticising how he was currently doing it first.

He saw Arthur scowl angrily and a very clear ‘they will never find your body’ look cross his face, but then a hand disappeared up into Eames’ open peacoat and Eames stepped back into his space and once again there was kissing, except this time both of the participants were involved. Arthur had screwed his eyes shut, presumably to let at least one of his senses remain ignorant of what was happening to him, and Eames had abandoned his mouth and was taking the less-likely-to-get-his-tongue-bitten-off position kissing all along Arthur’s jaw and exposed neck. 

“Should we look away?” he asked.

“What if something bad happens?”

“I think we can safely say we’ve already reached that stage.”

*

The job went off without a hitch. Eames got paid, caught a flight and was gone. Cobb, Mal and Arthur went out to celebrate and Arthur got drunk and complained bitterly and at length about stubble rash and refused to work with Eames ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edinburgh

Nash thought Arthur was a world class idiot. He was quietly pleased about deducing this when everyone else on the team seemed to think the sun shone efficiently and productively out of Arthur’s arse. Nevertheless, Nash was the one about to go on a hot date with Eames in a fancy private members club, eat something called Balmoral Chicken (he already googled the menu) drink 20 year old single malt and not have to spend a dime for the privilege- whereas Arthur was probably going to munch a plain salad in front of his laptop screen whilst leaving pedantic comments on Reddit about something called a _shirt placket_.

Eames was politely British enough to have not said anything, but Nash knew Cobb would’ve preferred his point man to be going to scope out the mark and the partner Eames was going to forge. However, Arthur had refused, so Nash was basically going along for the ride- to fill the seat opposite Eames and maybe soak up the atmosphere if they needed him to build something later down the line. Which suited him fine. All he had to do was eat, drink and look like he was loved by someone as good looking as Eames clearly was under all that horrible polyester and stubble. Nash didn’t even care that Eames was a guy- he was going to make Nash seem desirable and hot by association to any women there and that in his book, coupled with the dinner, was a total win.

He also suspected that he and Eames were going to make a much more believable couple than Arthur and Eames ever would. This was because Nash knew how to behave on a date: he’d remember to smile at the forger, be polite to the waiter and when it was dessert time offer to share his delicious cranachan (googled the menu _and_ highlighted what he was going to have beforehand.)

Arthur’s default facial expression when it came to Eames was a scowl, or, if he was feeling less hostile, a blank ‘I am clearly just waiting until you are out of my line of sight again’ gaze. Arthur’s natural tendency to nit-pick meant he was a waiter’s nightmare (Nash had seen Arthur reduce a barista to tears) and the one time Eames took a swig of Arthur’s water bottle it went straight in the bin with a disgusted thud, even though it was still two thirds full. Admittedly Nash didn’t know what to make of the exhange that accompanied such a transgression (“That was for my mouth only, Eames.” “Ah, that lesser known James Bond classic. Come on pet, your mouth knows where my mouth has been.” _And there was the scowl_ , although Nash had to admit Eames’ Sean Connery drawl was masterful.)

Before the slap-up dinner, though, they had to go into the Old Town because Eames insisted on wearing a kilt, which meant a fitting in a low beamed, snug ye olde worlde exclusive kiltmakers just off the Royal Mile. Part of the reason Arthur was so pissed at Eames this time was because of that. Eames however had convinced Cobb that if he were to worm his way into the inner circle of the mark- a wealthy gay romantic Scottish traditionalist- he needed to look the part. Nash suspected Eames just liked wearing skirts. He’d mock Eames for this except firstly he’d never tried one himself and maybe Eames was correct in his assessment that they were pretty freeing, and secondly it was possible Arthur hated kilts because they were the exact opposite of his obscenely tight trousers, so Nash was pro-kilt just for that.

Arthur supervised Eames in the tailors because the forger wasn’t trusted with expenses, whilst Nash lounged on a deeply worn leather couch and flicked through a magazine called ‘Grouse Shooting.’ Before ducking his head to walk in here he didn’t even know what a grouse was so the magazine proved extremely informative. The tailor primly measured Eames for not only a kilt but all sorts of strange sundry items, including weirdly laced shoes and a pretty ridiculous shirt. No customers came into the shop as it was that fancy it operated on ‘appointment only’ and only had capacity for two changing rooms- the other occupied. From time to time Nash spotted the second tailor also disappear into the back, clutching pieces of traditional garb and at one point their tailor and this other guy swapped cummerbunds mid journey. 

Arthur made a dismissive comment about the ‘knife sock’ the tailor handed over but Eames, in an immaculate brogue, corrected his terminology by referring to it as a ‘dirk’ and apologised that his ‘American barbarian’ didn’t know anything about weapons. Thereafter Arthur fumed in his chair and kept glaring at his watch in a non-subtle way. At some point another employee brought them all tea served from a teapot and a plate of shortbread, but alas no coffee for Arthur. Nash just kept finding more and more reasons to like Scotland as the days went by.

The supremely professional tailor, whom Nash reckoned Arthur would actually get on with if he gave him a chance, since they’re both clearly clothes perverts, was unhappy with the sporran he had picked out and so disappeared into the back to find one more suitable. Eames nudged Nash along the couch so he could sit down.

“What a place” he said, delighted, still in accent. “Huh, Arthur?”

Directly across from him, Arthur narrowed his eyes and bit out “could you please, please cross your legs or something?” Eames laughed and complied, but not without adding “Now darling, you know as a proper Scotsman these boxers won’t be staying on for the actual outing. It’s tradition, you know.”

Arthur looked like he wanted to throw up.

“Admit that some part of your brain finds me quite appealing in this get-up. My rugged ancestors, the drovers of yore….”

“Drovers of yore? Really? I doubt this country had cars until the 1950s” Arthur snipped.

“Oh Arthur” Eames said gently, shaking his head “Cattle drovers. Moving herds of cattle from the highlands. In the times of the Jacobites the drovers were the only men allowed to be armed, since reiving- that’s cattle thievery- was a deadly pursuit. A drover would wrap himself up in his plaid and sleep with his drove and musket whatever the weather, knowing that his clan depended on him bringing them to the tryst safely so he’d get paid and the wee bairns could finally eat.”

“And here I was thinking a tryst was something romantic- but you’re saying it’s just a meat market?”

“Well, darling, before you met me I can understand why that’s what you’d think the word meant. Now admit it, all this talk of cowboys gets your American blood flowing.”

Just at that moment the elusive other customer emerged from his changing area, decked out in similar garb to Eames. He greeted them all warmly and when he got to Eames put a hand on each shoulder and beamed.

“I wondered whose dulcet tones I could hear outside my booth, and here’s the source. Marvellous. I don’t know who you are but you look excellent. Hamish has done an outstanding job plumping for the Keith tartan. Difficult to pull off that yellow thread in the blues but you do it with aplomb, my boy.”

The man turned his attention to the other occupants of the room. Nash smothered his amusement and schooled himself, ready to be introduced as Eames’ other half, but all he got was a cursory (although friendly) nod of acknowledgement and then the man’s gaze settled on Arthur.

“And you. My god you are a pretty laddie, if you don’t mind an old man saying so.”

Nash was certain Arthur most definitely minded. Ha.

“I mean, I don’t think I could manage being in love with a Yank- no offence of course- but each to their own. And I’m all for improving relations with our neighbours across the pond. Arthur, is it?”

Arthur nodded curtly and caught Eames eye. Eames stepped in.

“And I’m Ruairidh Macdonald- Keith tartan notwithstanding- so I hope you’re not a Campbell otherwise one of us is going have to have to leave this establishment tout suite.”

The older man burst out laughing. “Fear not, no betrayers here! And here I was praising you forming new alliances when you’re also remembering to honour the Auld Alliance too. I like you. I like you a lot! We should be friends!”

Nash had no idea what they were talking about. He decided to retreat into the grouse magazine, since he wasn’t needed to contribute.

“Ruairidh, my name is Angus Kilmartin and I absolutely insist that you and your delightful Yankee doodle join me for dinner in my lodge for a long weekend. There aren’t that many of us _homosexual_ Scots who also respect the traditions of our great nations- well, King James VI obviously and I suspect Ewan McGregor has been occasionally persuaded…” this caused him to guffaw, Eames to feign amusement and Arthur to roll his eyes, “so we need to stick together. On me. Good food, whisky, maybe a wee bit of ceilidhing in the byre after? What do you say? If you have plans cancel them!”

Nash was very surprised by the speed at which Eames agreed. But that was because it wouldn’t be until they left the tailors that he would remember Kilmartin was the mark’s name. The meeting, which Eames had no doubt vicariously plotted anyway with his little kilt-insistence, had given them a perfect in, but at the cost of Nash’s Balmoral Chicken.

Fucking Arthur.

“Mr Kilmartin” Eames said amiably “My boyfriend and I would be delighted.”

*

Mal’s text alert woke her from her afternoon nap and she blearily reached out for it on the hotel bedside table. Dom, as always, slept right through any and all disturbances- a talent she was initially envious of but that had turned to suspicion since it always left her dealing with problems.

Today’s problem was named Eames.

_Mal. Please could you ask Arthur to get the lube out of the drawer._

She sighed deeply and put her phone back on the table. She'd _told_ Dom this job was going to be a problem.

It buzzed again.

_The entire job rests on it, I swear._

She opened her eyes and reluctantly composed a message to Arthur.

_Arthur. WTF. Just do what he wants. I’m asleep._

She got the world’s least surprising reply.

_I fucking hate him._

_Get the lube Arthur. You can kill him in the morning._

*

Eames was acutely aware that the weekend at the lodge was not going all that well. Initially, it _had_ gone well because there was shooting and Arthur was excellent at shooting, which meant everyone immediately loved him. Some of the guests were clearly inexperienced with .308 calibres and Arthur managed to preserve a lot of dignity by preventing sudden kickbacks and the odd tumble teaching them how to properly brace. Eames actually sort of enjoyed watching Arthur chide and boss and generally take charge. He 'accidentally' shot the Land Rover rear light out just to see him roll his eyes.

He himself made conversation with everyone, gossiped and exuded friendliness, all in that warm rolling accent, so there was no worry there either. And the food _was_ outstanding and the whisky _hella smoky_ and things could maybe work out to their advantage. 

No. The one flaw in the plan was that Arthur and Eames did not get along with each other. And Kilmartin noticed. Since the whole reason he’d invited them was on the strength of their supposed relationship, this quickly became a problem and Eames was concerned that their in was going to dry up and undo all the progress they’d made so far. After dinner on the second day he herded Arthur into their bedroom so they could regroup.

“Listen Arthur, I really believe I can get him to invite me to their house in the city, and then I’ll have more than enough material to forge the partner for the dream share” he explained.

“But…”

“But just now was the second time Kilmartin’s asked if everything’s alright between us. And this time he intimated that if we needed to leave early to sort things out, well…”

He watched Arthur frown, then look at the bed, then purse his lips in a tight line. It was a bloody marvellous bed and not even the point man’s huffy put-out-ness had spoiled it for Eames last night when, after an evening of single malt whisky and a showing in the private cinema of that 1945 Powell and Pressburger romantic classic ‘I Know Where I’m Going!’ he’d snuggled under its woollen duvet and nuzzled his happy face into the crisp, firm pillows. Arthur could resume kicking him in his sleep then snuffling unattractively on his shoulder again tonight and it would not spoil this bed.

However.

“I’ve been nice.”

“I know, but my understanding of you being nice, and an overly sentimental romantic’s understanding of you being nice is a bit different, love.”

“I suppose we were supposed to neck in the movie theatre, then?” came the irked reply.

“No but try to remember you are pretending to be my partner. You didn't even sit next to me during the film. Plus it just looks weird you being so firm and hands on with everyone else but barely acknowledging I exist.”

This, as he suspected it would, earned him another frown but Eames knew ripping the plaster off in one swift go was best for the job in the long run.

Arthur folded his arms. “What, exactly, do you mean by that. ‘Firm.’ ‘Hands on.’ That’s very specific.”

“Well you do like a bit of _specificity_.”

“Eames…”

Eames took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He then went for it:

“Well, Arthur. I think after you took charge of the shooting class yesterday everyone here has drawn their own conclusions about…” he waggled his fingers between the two of them “how this works, in here” he nodded at the lovely, lovely bed “which is completely fine by me, so I am suggesting without further ado, since as I am sure you are aware, being the best point man in the business, that Kilmartin is currently spying on us out of his window and into our room, that you ravage me up a bit until he gets the impression we’ve worked things out. Carnally.”

Eames admitted to himself that he’d bundled all that together because he got a secret joy out of watching Arthur unpack things: the miniscule flickerings of emotions across his face that he tried to tamp down- in this particular instance confusion, disgust, annoyance and finally contemplation.

“You think I should knock you about a little?” he said warily.

“God no! That’s not my kind of thing. Hey” he raised his hands quickly “No judgment if it’s yours, but I’m more into charm and disarm than, you know…actual harm. Get enough of that in my day job.”

Arthur unfolded his arms and slid his hands into his pockets.

“I’m not interested in giving a fucking peeping Tom a show” he growled, which-fair.

“Oh yeah I am so in agreement there, but we’re already in medias res, Arthur. Otherwise we walk out of here and he corners me and asks what’s wrong _again_ or worse, he actually stops talking to me and my invite to hang out with them and really nail this job goes out the window. The non-peeping Tom window.”

Arthur kicked the corner of the bed mindlessly.

“God I hate working with you.”

“I know.”

“I am not kissing you.”

“Be still my beating heart.”

“Fuck off Eames. I suppose at least he can’t hear us.”

“So you can drop the sweet bedside manner? Yes.” Eames smiled lightly, trying to put the point man at ease. “How about you, uh, get me out of my shirt at least?”

Arthur honest to God wolfishly grinned. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that I’m 100% into.”

_Hello cognitive dissonance, my old friend_ Eames’ brain went.

Arthur made a show of sliding his hands out of the pockets of those beautiful-fitting trousers. Eames swallowed, his body reacting instinctively to signals his brain kept reminding him were fake. Arthur efficiently undid half the buttons on his shirt then tugged it down over his shoulders until Eames’ arms were pinned by the rest.

“You’ve done this before” Eames said.

“I’m trying to make it look…you know”

He nodded. “And I’m sure it does.”

Arthur shoved him lightly until the backs of his knees hit the side of the bed.

“I’ve seen war crimes that offend my eyes less than your tattoos, Eames.”

“That’s the spirit, Arthur. On you go.” Eames squirmed until he’d managed to get his arms free. He peeled off the loudly patterned shirt so Arthur could see all of his offending tattoos and not just some of them.

“I bet you had a poster of Taxi Driver above your bed when you were a teenager.”

Eames knew he wasn’t supposed to grin, because that would break the whole power dynamic vibe they were trying to convey, but it was hard.

“No, actually. You, I suspect, probably had a poster of Nietzsche. When I glare into the abyss _Arthur glares back._ ”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Let’s get this over with.” He crowded up against Eames, who only had the briefest moment to realise he _was_ about to be kissed before Arthur fastened his mouth to his own. He was immediately pushed down towards the bed, but since Eames has wound his hand into Arthur's expensive tie Arthur tumbled with him. In the sudden soft-thudded landing Eames unintentionally bit Arthur’s top lip, which led to, in a complete upending of all pre-agreed manoeuvres and Eames’ own expectations, Arthur responding instinctively by licking right into his mouth. It was so surprising and so good Eames responded in kind.

It was inevitable that once Arthur’s brain came back on line he would brutally counter by shutting it all down, and so Eames found himself hauled from out of under the point man and shoved hard. Neither of them had the best spatial awareness after their Oscar award winning performance and so they toppled down the side of the bed and thumped loudly and painfully onto the carpet.

“For fucks sake” Arthur snarled, whilst Eames rubbed the back of his aching head.

“At least we’re out of his eyeline.”

Arthur deigned to glance at Eames’ war wound. “Did you hit it on the table?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Should I expect that to mean all of these great ideas you’ve been having recently will dry up?”

Eames was in too much pain to respond.

“You bit my lip, you asshole.”

Eames shuffled himself lower to the ground, just to make sure he couldn’t be seen. “So, I guess we just wait here for an allotted amount of time….”

“How much time?”

He grinned and waggled his eyebrows, which normally he didn’t do because he knew it pissed Arthur off. But Arthur had caused him a head injury and also had licked into his mouth and was refusing to acknowledge it, so Eames was not above changing the rules a bit.

“As long as it takes for you to get me out of my trousers and manfully take me.”

Arthur screwed his eyes up in displeasure.

“So you should really reach up and get the lube, to make it believable. It’s in the bedside cabinet.”

“Why the fuck did you put lube in our bedside cabinet, dickhead?!”

“Set dressing. In case the cleaner rummaged. I was selling the masquerade. Now be a love and clamber up. Maybe take your shirt off first. I reckon you would’ve shed it at this juncture.”

Eames watched the point man talk himself out of eviscerating his colleague. It took a while and obviously cost Arthur dearly in self worth. Throughout it he kept firing off angry bitten-off glares and raking his nails through the lovely tartan carpet. Eames would sympathise but his head hurt and Arthur’s wrath was a little too familiar to be all that scary at this point in their relationship. He fumbled in his pocket for his phone whilst Arthur worked through his issues. Mal would help. Mal could get Arthur to do anything.

*

Eames spent the following week with Kilmartin and his partner in a beautiful town house in the New town area of Edinburgh. They were so welcoming and gave Eames such free rein of the house that one afternoon when they were both out he stumbled upon the information they’d been hired to extract via dreamshare- saving themselves and the client weeks of further work and thousands of dollars in fees. Cobb was so happy he bought Eames flowers. Nash got to go to some music festival in Norway he thought he was going to miss, so he was also delighted.

“I am never working with you again” Arthur spat out over his shoulder, when he dropped Eames at the airport. “I don’t care if Cobb pays me in his children.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pasadena

Eames resented how little effort California made to acknowledge they were in the midst of a funeral. The sunlight dappled through the trees of the graveyard and if he crooked his head to his left and squinted, he could even make out the shining blue of the Pacific Ocean. He glanced over at the Cobb kids in their matching smart clothes- as dark as their grandmother could manage to persuade them into without explanation-and briefly recalled his own mother’s funeral, the appropriate rain, the grey, overcast sky, the pale faces of the mourners- when it came to mourning, London was hard to beat. Here everyone looked heartbroken but healthy. Only Mal’s father, a Londoner like him, had the good grace to look appropriately ashen. Her mother and sister Audrey, both as astoundingly beautiful as Mal had been, were the picture of French elegance in their black dresses and shades.

Audrey had her arm looped around Arthur’s- which didn’t bode well.

Later, at the wake back at the Cobb’s house, he made a few laps of the guests, trotting out the lie about how he’d known Mal from work, how yes he did work with that nice young man who’d made the effort to wear a three piece suit even in this heat (he didn’t have the heart to tell them that was what Arthur usually wore) and then eventually siphoned himself away to a quiet corner where he perched on a built in seat and closed his eyes.

“Are you asleep, Uncle Eames?”

Eames cracked open one eyelid. “Half of me is asleep, Jam-Jam. This half.” He waved a hand down one side of his body. “I’m sleeping like a shark does.”

Dom’s youngest grinned and clambered up next to the forger. “Cool. I’m going to do that, too.”

He shuffled against Eames’ side and proceeded to try to close one eye whilst keeping the other open. It was a struggle for him and in the end Eames wrapped an arm around his small shoulders, and covered his eye with the palm of his hand, like a patch.

“There you go, buddy. Try it now.” A moment later the sound of poorly imitated snores filled the nook. Eames burst out laughing, then when James chastised him with a ‘shh, I’m trying to sleep” he smothered them into a fond grin.

Their performance drew the attention of Audrey, who drifted over and stood in front on him, clearly approving of the tableau in front of her.

“So cute. Mister Eames, it’s kind of you to come all this way. Thank you.”

Eames revised his analysis of before: she was still as beautiful as ever, but she was clearly a poorly-held-together mess. He’d seen her earlier with a glass of white wine but now she had a glass of bourbon loose in her hand. She’d abandoned her heels and was wondering around in stockinged feet, and at some point she’d applied red lipstick to her mouth in a tactic Eames didn’t really want to speculate upon. He had met her a few times in the past, at birthday parties, at the wedding of course, and recalled that one way she differed from her sister was that Mal had been tough, but Audrey was fragile. She worked in a costume department in a theatre in the South of France and, for better or worse, that’s why Arthur’s suits had initially meant trouble. Eames noted warily that Audrey was currently wearing his jacket around her shoulders. 

“Jam is jelly in the United Kingdoms” James announced suddenly, peeling away Eames’ hand.

“Hello James. Your aunt, I’m afraid, does not understand. Please could you explain?”

“Jelly is jello. You eat jam with toast. You eat jelly with icecream. My friend Sanja lives with his uncle and his aunt and they are married but you aren’t married to Uncle Arthur are you?”

Eames watched her face carefully to calculate just how disastrous the funeral was going to be and was disheartened to see Audrey smile brightly and glance behind her at the person in question, tucked in a similar nook, also with not his first bourbon, who’d apparently been watching them the whole time. She gave him a little wave with her glass-bearing hand then turned back to James.

“We aren’t married but we are special to each other” she said.

Eames ruffled James’ hair and asked quickly “speaking of icecream, shall we go find some in the kitchen?”

The boy’s eyes lit up but then he pouted. “Grandma says it’s a sad day and icecream is only for treats.”

Audrey shook her head and leaned down. “Well grandma’s wrong, James. When I’m feeling especially sad I like to have a treat to cheer me up.” She winked at Eames then straightened up and looked back at Arthur.

Eames understood her implication perfectly well and didn’t think much of her using the innocence of a kid who didn’t even understand his mother was dead to make it. He liked Audrey well enough but there was going to be fall-out from this that she didn’t understand in her grieving, fragile state. He would’ve loved to be able to put his faith in Arthur’s usual uptight sensibilities but since Arthur was about as in touch with his emotions at the moment as James was generally, it was very likely the whole shitshow that was Mal’s sister’s futile but long-lived crush on Cobb’s point man was going to get a new and horrifying chapter added to it. And ultimately, he felt like perhaps she’d suffered enough.

He hadn’t the inclination or quite frankly the lack of self-preservation to tackle the psychology behind Arthur hooking up with one of Arthur’s closest friend’s echoes the first time round, let alone now that Mal was gone and Arthur was on the hunt for some kind of release, but needs must. Internally he sighed and prepared himself for some pain in a couple of hours’ time. Because this time he _was_ going to intervene. 

“Well hold on a minute Jam-Jam, I’m _uncle_ Eames, so maybe me and your aunt are together. Did you ever think about that?”

He schooled his face into a practiced but fake look of mischief tinged with definite flirtation and presented it to Audrey. She blinked, taking a moment to decode the implication there, but she eventually found it and the idea Eames had reluctantly but out of necessity planted took root.

“Oh yes, I’d forgotten you were also an uncle. I have, delightfully, just remembered.”

“And I’m the cool uncle” he said. “Aren’t I, buddy?”

James nodded definitively. What an accomplice.

She smiled meaningfully at him and Eames successfully ignored his brain trying to parse the fact that she was attractive with the fact she looked a little like his dead friend. See, Arthur. That’s how it’s done. 

“We can have treats together, I think” he smirked, standing and taking James’ hand. He slipped his other hand into hers. “It feels like one of those occasions.”

*

Professor Miles had always liked this house. It was an architect’s house, made to be lived happily in, so it was a bloody travesty that it was the location for a wake. But he understood the reasons; that the kids shouldn’t be subject to more disruption than absolutely necessary, that Mal loved California and had wanted to be buried here when the time came. It’s just…it came too soon. Every parent knew you weren’t supposed to bury your kids.

Cobb looked so young, untethered and flailing hopelessly through the rituals of the day. Plus, the police had already been to the house a couple of times to interview him and they were ramping up the investigation rather than signing it off as a suicide. Normally Cobb’s business partner, Arthur, would be doing most of the legwork to keep things ticking over, but something this personal had clearly knocked him for six too. He nodded as the man in question drifted over and joined him in a quiet corner of the room.

“Arthur, I don’t want to add to your woes, but that associate of yours, Eames?” He must have pronounced it wrongly because he was corrected.

“Eames. Like… ‘seems.’ Which, believe me, is actually appropriate.”

“Or dreams.”

“Yeah. What about him, professor?”

“Well…” Miles wasn’t really sure what kind of reaction he was about to get from Arthur. He knew all about his younger daughter’s feelings for him: the fact that a few years ago she had thought Arthur was a safe choice of boyfriend after all the actors she’d been out with before (“he’s an accountant, papa, honestly he couldn’t be more safe and boring”) the way she’d fallen hard and Mal had forced Arthur to do something about it rather than keep leading her on, the obvious way something was going to happen between them tonight because neither of them were handling Mal’s death well…

“Uh, it’s just, I saw him drive off with Audrey earlier. In some poncey sports car. Now, I know my daughter’s a grown woman, but still, maybe you could have a word with him about how inappropriate it is to hit on people whilst at a wake. If you know what I mean?”

He watched Arthur furrow his brow and let out a huff of displeasure. Then he must’ve put two and two together because he asked for clarification: “Did you say sports car?”

“Yes. Some boy racer number with tinted windows.”

“For fuck’s sake Eames” came the bitten-out curse. He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking for something, then scanned the room.

“Have you seen Audrey? She’s got my jacket with my car keys in. At least they were until Eames lifted them. That fucker.”

Miles could tell Arthur was pretty drunk, partly from the swearing, so he gave him a moment to work through what he’d just said.

“Oh. Yeah. She went with Eames” Arthur realised belatedly.

“Lost your car and your jacket, huh?”

“Amongst other things” he muttered.

Miles was no fool. He knew what Arthur was indiscreetly referring to, too tipsy to remember he was talking to Audrey’s father, who probably didn’t want to know what Arthur’s intentions had been for later in the evening. 

“I thought Eames might be…” Miles began, trailing off, “you know….”

“Ah. Well sometimes he is. Sometimes he isn’t. He, uh, I think Eames would describe himself as a _people person._ He’s a forger so I think the concept of gender is sort of less important to him than…uh God I don’t know what he finds appealing. Apart from grand theft auto, obviously. And overly-patterned shirts.”

“Sounds like an interesting person to work with.”

“He’s the best forger around. Cobb won’t work with anyone else, even though I would be more than happy to. And Mal…”

“Yes?” To a grieving father any story that involved a lost loved one was water to a parched throat.

“Mal called him her…what was the word?...a _‘lutin?’_ I’m afraid even my French doesn’t stretch that far.”

“Ah. ‘Amusing goblin.’”

“Jesus, that makes so much sense. Apart from the amusing part. I can’t believe he’s stolen my car. I mean, I totally can. Ugh.”

“Well, to be fair to the amusing, lecherous, larcenous, goblin, you’ve probably had too much bourbon to drive anyway.”

Arthur didn’t seem to let this fact soften his anger towards his colleague and Miles wondered distantly if Eames was going to get a late-night visit from Cobb’s wound-up point man, and possibly Cobb’s point man’s concealed firearm. He sighed and felt a pang of pity for the young man next to him. How Audrey had bought into that whole accountant ruse when Miles thought you just had to look at the way he held himself, the tight, withdrawn shuttered facial expressions, the obvious-so obvious- military bearing, to know Arthur was a bloody dangerous human being, was testament to how sweet and innocent his youngest was. He let out a silent prayer that she never changed and was for the thousandth time grateful she wasn’t in the dreamshare business.

“What’s the tackiest most expensive hotel near here?” Arthur said.

Miles decided not to enquire as to why he wanted to know.

“The Pretty Polly has a seven-foot parrot in the lobby, made out of real parrot feathers.”

“It does?”

“Yes. Some parrots got loose from a zoo in the 1970s and now…”

“Yep” came the interruption. “That’ll be where Eames is staying.”

*

Eames didn’t have to even wonder who was hammering on his door at just after midnight. He climbed out of bed, padded over, steeled himself, and let Arthur in.

“Hello love.”

“Don’t fucking love me, Eames. You took my car.”

“It’s fine. Not a scratch, I swear.”

“And Audrey? Really?! Was that just because…” he waved his hand vaguely in Eames’ direction “because you could?”

Eames frowned. “Of course not. Who does that? Misogynist bastards, maybe. Anyway, I didn’t. I just drove her to her hotel and put her to bed.”

“Really.” Arthur didn’t even try to keep the flat incredulity out of his voice, which Eames found annoying and even though he knew Arthur was sort of still drunk he wasn’t in the mood to let it lie.

“Yes Arthur. Really. Because having sex with the grieving sister is a pretty shitty thing to do. Even when she doesn’t already have misplaced feelings for my sexy accountant arse.” He made sure to say it in a way that conveyed just how onto Arthur he was.

Arthur swallowed. “I wasn’t going to…”

“Really.” he replied in the same tone.

“Has she still got my jacket?”

“No. It’s…”

“Is it still in the fucking car?! The hotel valet’s probably…”

Eames folded his arms and scowled emphatically. “No, you wankered moron who clearly couldn’t have driven anyway. If you let me finish. It’s hanging up in my wardrobe.”

Arthur’s face went from annoyed to bewildered. “You hung it up?”

“Well of course I did. I know how you feel about your suits, Arthur.”

That earned him a confused moment of peace and quiet, which he used to stroll over to the cupboard in question. He returned with the jacket and placed it carefully in the point man’s arms.

“There you go” he said lightly. “Ticket’s in the pocket.”

Arthur stood in the doorway with the garment draped over his arms and didn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Neither did he seem like he was staying. Eames hadn’t really seen him this indecisive before so he decided to enjoy it, because Arthur exhibiting new emotions and behaviours was actually one of the things that brought him pleasure in life. Also the seven foot parrot. That was a marvel he was happy to have lived long enough to witness.

“It’s not true that sharks sleep half their body at a time, you know” Arthur said quietly.

“Isn’t it?”

“No. They just have active and restful periods.”

“Yes. I know. I watch a lot of Blue Planet when I’m on long haul flights.”

“What’s Blue Planet?”

“It’s a British tv show. David Attenborough. National treasure.”

Arthur nodded. “Ah. Uh, so why did you tell James…”

Eames shrugged. Arthur went on.

“You know Philippa likes me more than you, so…at least I have that.”

Eames took the time to rub each of his bare feet up his ankles. He unpacked what Arthur was trying clumsily to communicate, reckoned he’d parsed it well enough, and offered a reply drunk indignant Arthur probably didn’t deserve right now. But Mal was dead so normal rules didn’t apply.

“Lots of people like you” he said softly. “Mal thought you were the dog’s bollocks.”

The faintest smile flickered across his face. “I never understood how that phrase could be a good thing.”

“Queen’s English, innit?” Eames replied. “Besides, Philippa only likes you the best because you taught her how to play _and win_ at Go. She’s got, like, two hundred bucks in a piggy bank from all the old wrinkly Californians she’s beaten in the park.”

Eames was aware that not only was Arthur just standing in his hotel doorway, making no move to leave, he was also now just looking at him.

“Arthur.”

One of Arthur’s finger’s pressed gently against Eames’ threadbare t-shirt, the one he liked to sleep in.

“Is that Columbo?”

“Yes.”

“ 'One more thing.' ” 

"Why don't we stick to me doing the impressions, huh?"

Arthur’s gaze settled on Eames’ mouth.

“Arthur” he tried again, more firmly. Eames was used to guys, certain kinds of guys, staring at his mouth. He knew what they were thinking.

He didn’t like Arthur doing it. 

“I lied to James- and Audrey- because sometimes lying to innocent people is the right thing to do” Eames explained, trying to redirect them back to earlier, less ambiguous territory.

“You and I could….” Arthur breathed out.

Eames shook his head. “No Arthur.”

The point man licked his lips. “Because I’ve been drinking?”

“Because I don’t want to. With you.”

Arthur nodded slowly.

“It’s never going to happen Arthur, so you should walk away now. Go to sleep.”

Arthur caught his eye then shifted away, embarrassed. “Uh, I should go. I, uh, yeah probably going to have a hangover so.”

“The concierge’ll call you a taxi. Stick it on my room tab. You’re at the Millard, yes?”

Arthur blinked. “How…”

“It’s Frank Lloyd Wright, Arthur. I have noticed the way you dress.”

Arthur nodded again and stepped back out of the door.

“Uh. Goodnight.”

“Sleep tight. Look me up if your next job needs a forger.”

“Yeah.” He drifted back into the hallway and clumsily shrugged himself back into his jacket.

Eames gently closed the door and rubbed his face. Bloody California. Joni Mitchell could keep it, as far as he was concerned. 

*

Arthur did not look Eames up when he indeed next needed a forger. Cobb frowned but didn’t press for reasons. Eames found out he’d been inexplicably spurned anyway and sent Arthur a brutal three word text.

_Really, Arthur? Really._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dresden, Part 1

In hindsight Eva should’ve listened to the voices in her head (and in her circle of dreamshare colleagues) who cautioned against working with a man who’d probably murdered his wife four months earlier. _But Arthur will be there_ said other, now she thought about it, less reliable voices. _Arthur is a safe pair of hands. Arthur gets shit done. Arthur looks absolutely delicious in tailoring. Although good luck trying to hit that._

In the end Eva knew that it was her own character flaw of arrogance that had got her into this mess. When she’d been offered a try-out to join the best extraction team in the business, she’d jumped at it. She just needed a chance to prove herself and this would be a foot in the door. A door straight to the lucrative jobs only the cream of the crop (including a probable murderer) got their hands on.

She respected Eames well enough, but damned if she wasn’t a better forger than he was. She could spell, for one thing. And she wasn’t idiotic enough to get so drunk she woke up having joined a circus. Or stay for a season. Jesus. No wonder the British Secret Service (allegedly) ‘retired’ him. He could’ve single-handedly got that ‘Great’ chipped right off their illustrious name.

She flew from her apartment in Lisbon direct to Dresden and took a taxi to the hotel, checked in and unpacked, changed into a cashmere sweater and jeans and headed back out to the bar they were all due to meet in. It was early evening by then and, as she slipped into what was almost certainly an inadequate jacket, she cursed not remembering the festive season this far North almost always meant snow.

Dominic Cobb and his point man were tucked into the back of the room where less patrons gathered, since it was far removed from the open fire nearer the bar. It being Dresden (mostly new builds due to the war) and judging by the hip furniture (low end versions of Danish classics or high end versions of cheap Ikea, depending on how you looked at it) there was almost certainly built-in heating as well, but the fire looked aesthetically welcoming and, as a forger well knows, appearance is everything.

Arthur was politely friendly, shaking her hand and catching the attention of the table staff in order to get her a drink. He was, alas, not wearing a suit but instead wore a dark blue jumper over black denim and sturdy black winter boots. Slung neatly over the back of the bench was a navy wool coat and watch cap, and Eva made a quick private bet with herself that when the ensemble was put together he looked like a submariner on shore leave. Which was certainly no bad thing.

Dominic Cobb, in contrast, was unshaven. He had a shirt and jacket on, but they were both crumpled and his shirt was unbuttoned to the second button as if he’d also forgotten Germany was cold this time of year, too. If the roles had been reversed and Eva had been interviewing them, his first impression wouldn’t have, as Eames said _cut the mustard._

They filled her in on the details of the job: Cobb was the architect, Arthur running point as always, and they had a chemist but she wasn’t going to go under with them since she was pregnant and the compounds apparently messed with her hormones. The mark was a woman who was refusing to give up the location of her ex, wanted for various white-collar crimes by the German authorities. They weren’t _technically_ working for the German police, but the client was an interested third-party who would feed whatever pertinent information he unrooted (via this job) to them in order to move the case along. It wasn’t the most exciting job Eva had ever worked on and she was a little disappointed this was what she was testing out for- especially since the dreamshare community was rife with rumours there was a big commission from Cobol Enterprises in the works for a team that could handle it- but it was pay and it was experience and it was an opportunity to maybe get in with this crew.

After introductions and pleasantries they headed to the warehouse space for a run and to meet Adimu, the chemist. She shivered and rubbed herself down with a proffered towel (since the thick snow had of course found her unprotected form even the short distance to Arthur’s hired car) whilst Arthur set up the PASIV and Cobb walked her through some of the architecture.

“It’s just a trial run, you understand. Arthur wants to see what you can do.”

“Fair enough.”

“It’s just normally we use someone else, so….”

Eva smiled politely. Cobb was obviously trying to muster up some enthusiasm because he returned the smile and said, as brightly as he could, “Consider it an opportunity to really impress him.”

“Go big or go home, right?” she grinned.

“Exactly.”

She followed him over to the lounge chairs and lay down whilst Arthur hooked her into the machine. He was quick but careful and the needle barely hurt at all. Adimu waddled over, ready to hook Arthur up when he was done.

“When’s the baby due?” she asked politely.

“Babies. Three weeks. Don’t even think about making a joke about the kick because I have heard them all.”

Eva smiled, but glancing between Cobb and Arthur she had to wonder from whom, since neither of these men seemed like a barrel of laughs. She’d pay good money to see Arthur respond passionately to anything, maybe lose some of that infamous control.

“You’ve got about half an hour before the kick. Listen for the Christmas Carol” Adimu said.

“Appropriate.”

“Well, I am fruitlessly trying to spread some holiday cheer in here. As you can see” she said, winking conspiratorially.

“So, whose dream is this?”

“Dom’s” Arthur replied. “But nothing too fancy. A version of Dresden he’s been putting together, with some tweaks. I’m the subject so they’ll be my projections, hence they’ll be well behaved. You had time to study the profiles I sent over?”

“Yes. Three separate forges of people you’ve both been tailing for the last month.”

“Just me. Dom’s been building. And…he has other stuff to keep him occupied.”

_Don’t mention the murder, Eva_

“So… it’s just you I have to impress then?”

The reply was curt. “Yes.” Eva figured she’d try again.

“Luckily for you I tend to make an impression.”

That got her another small nod but that was it. She suddenly worried that maybe there were other forgers they were interviewing, that the whole murderer thing hadn’t put off nearly as many other colleagues as she’d thought. She nearly asked there and then, but it was too late, far too late by now. The needle was in her arm, the PASIV was fired up and to her left Cobb was already out for the count.

Damnit. She really did need to pull out all the stops. She was just going to have to forge so well that Arthur would demand she join the team as soon as they woke up. She scrambled through the profiles she’d been working on and racked her brain for just how to nail this now she knew the architectural environment she was being submerged into.

“How do you feel?” Arthur asked, once more in that polite but kind of flat tone.

_Oh. Oh yeah. That might work._

“Good to go” she grinned. 

*

Eva had to admit Cobb had really thrown himself into recreating the Striezelmarkt. It was no mean feat to build the giant Christmas arch and convey the feel of over 200 festive stalls, plus of course the towering advent calendar complete with life size windows. Cobb had even recreated the ferris wheel. She wondered if perhaps he was using building to distract him from the fact he probably murdered his wife, but equally it could just be that he was a consummate professional.

They had agreed that he and Arthur would stroll around the Christmas market and that she would, in the guise of the three test forges, cross their paths at some point. Since Arthur was attuned to the movements and mannerisms of the real life marks it would be a measure of whether Eva had successfully replicated them if Arthur could pick them out of the crowd.

She spent some time around the food stalls then headed over in her first new skin to the stand that sold the iconic little smoking men and where she’d spied Cobb and Arthur examining the merchandise. Cobb had toned down the incessant heavy snow of real Dresden and so now only light fluffy flakes fell from the sky. Eva shook out her umbrella and raised it over her head, catching a projection in the arm on purpose. He glared and she let rip in over-entitled Spanish; blaming him for not watching where he was going, the market for not having wide enough aisles and Germany in general for being too far North. The stranger backed off and disappeared into the crowd just as she felt a tap on her shoulder. She swung round and Arthur ducked prudently to avoid becoming the umbrella’s second victim.

“Felicis Navidad, Senorita” he said in greeting.

Eva gesticulated angrily at the long-gone projection and then at Arthur and Cobb and lamented the fact Americans clearly felt they were entitled to everything, including all the walkway space in a crowded European market.

Arthur nodded politely and reached out and rubbed the edge of her jacket between his fingers.

“PVC rather than leather, since she’s a vegetarian. Excellent.”

Eva dropped the persona, shrugged modestly, took a couple of steps back and faded into the crowd. One down.

She found them a while later drifting around the stollen-making area and wondered if they found the rich sweet smells of the moist, heavy fruit-laden bread-making stands as seductive as she did. Or if Arthur felt a little weird thanking one of his own projections when they handed him a free piece of marzipan to taste. It would would only be a pale sensation made up of his memories of eating marzipan rather than actual flavour hitting his taste buds, since in the dream only the most vivid of sensations- like pain and maybe on rare occasions sex- felt real enough. She waited until she saw him pop it in his mouth anyway, then headed in his direction.

This second forge had been trickier than the brash Spaniard because the person was softer, subtler, with less distinguishing physical features. Arthur had sent over some video footage of the forges but the stuff for this guy, a student at the university, was just of him getting coffee and reading a book, so it wasn’t much to go on. She’d had to remember what it was like to be a student, all those quiet dreamer boys in her class that she’d paid scant attention to because they seemed so passionless to her. If she’d known she’d end up having to imitate them for her career maybe she would have at least deigned to date a few of them. Fortunately, her brother was exactly this kind of person, so she just channelled him into her performance. She bumped into Arthur, flushed and didn’t make eye contact, waved an apologetic finger by her head to blame the fact she had headphones in, dropped her tattered copy of Infinite Jest in the snow and retrieved it, but not without making sure Arthur could read the title first. A glasses adjustment, a sheepish lingering smile, a placating raising of fingerless-gloved hands.

_Yes, since you ask, I am an intelligent sensitive young man who might be up for a dalliance with a handsome stranger._

“Has anyone even finished that book?” Arthur laughed. “Ursula le Guin is much shorter. And better.”

“I prefer Saramago. I have some back at my digs if you’re interested…”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess he’s Portuguese?”

“Portuguese Nobel Prize Winner to you. Hello again, Arthur.”

“Eva. Impressive. Only students wear those kind of pointless gloves in this weather.”

“Impressive enough that we can stop?”

Arthur dropped the momentary light-heartedness. “I need to know for sure you can do the job. It’s…well I know from the outside it might not seem like a difficult job but…for Dom it’s come at a time that…”

Eva touched his arm to reassure him it was fine. “No worries. Go get some hot chocolate, enjoy the market a little more. I’ll find you in a while.”

She watched him walk away and sighed. There probably were other forgers they were seeing, and there was a world of different between replicating some strangers from photos and film footage and proving you could slide into another person’s skin and _be them_ well enough to fool even their closest colleagues.

She had one more chance.

Arthur was about to ride the Ferris wheel so Eva had to jog to reach him before he became inaccessible to her final forge, but actually, she thought, being alone for a few minutes with him was the perfect opportunity to prove herself. No interruptions, no distractions, just the two of them figuring out that they were a great professional match. 

She nipped past the projections milling about the entrance to the ride and slipped into the compartment next to the point man. She felt him glance across at her but her heavy parka hood ably hid her face. The pod began to slowly leave the ground as the wheel began its slow turn. She waited until they were maybe fifteen feet up in the air before speaking.

“Be a love and budge up a bit, will you?”

Arthur moved to accommodate but didn’t say anything, because why would he? He thought she was just one of his projections. She could see him scanning the ground below looking for her, looking for a bottle-blonde tired mother of three who was trying to pass herself off as ten years younger than she really was. 

The wheel reached its zenith and paused. Eva leaned forward, causing the pod to rock back and forth a little.

“Sorry! Honestly, I just want a butchers at this lovely view but I also don’t want to drop me hood and get snowed on, know what I mean?”

That finally got the response she was hoping for, Arthur’s brain registering her British accent, noting the dialect features realising that they weren’t something his projections would use…

She shrugged his hood down and beamed at him out of a familiar, stubbly face. “Oh bugger it, what’s the harm in a few snowflakes, huh, Arthur?”

Eva saw the moment where her ingenious idea to forge Arthur’s usual forger backfired. She’d been expecting surprise, which she got, but then also maybe a wry smile or a nod of appreciation- because she knew she’d done a good job, carefully detailed with the speech patterns and the physicality, but remembering to imbue even the briefest of conversations with a touch of humour and friendliness.

No, the issue wasn’t that Arthur was trapped twenty feet above a Christmas market looking at a poor version of Eames- it was just that _he was looking at Eames_ , and judging by his dark face so very very obviously didn’t want to be.

This was more explicitly confirmed when a snowball smacked her in the face.

“What the fuck?!”

Another one narrowly missed her, smashing off the pod cage.

Eva suddenly figured out why there had been a job opening for a forger. She leaned over and saw in horror that various projections were attempting to climb up the ferris wheel. They looked rabid and she had no doubts whatsoever what they intended to do when they reached her.

Another snowball smashed into the pod, dusting Arthur with snow. The whole ride began to shake ominously as the crowd below tried to yank it free from it’s support. She heard the metal screech and it begin to tip.

_Oh shit._

“Eames. I didn’t think you liked Ferris Wheels” Arthur said smoothly. “I thought the teacups would be more your sort of thing.”

*

Arthur and Cobb went a couple of rounds for a week over whether they really needed a forger after Eva had left. Arthur would had said that he appreciated Dom not probing too much over why he didn’t want her on the team, except Dom _should’ve_ pressed him and it was a measure of just how all-over-the-place his friend was on this first job back that he let it slide. But what else was Dom supposed to do except work? He couldn’t go back to the States until he found a way to clear his name, so he needed to keep busy in some way.

Arthur was fine being back on the job. He missed Mal but work like theirs had no room for emotions, so he made sure to keep them out of it.

Or, you know, something like that.

On Christmas Eve he went back into a version of the city they were going to use on the actual extraction. It began back in the Streizelmarkt but Dom had cheated the distancing so that after ten minutes of walking you found yourself out in the woods, all deep virgin snow and picture postcard spruce trees, their needles dusted white. It was beautiful and peaceful and since Arthur knew this Christmas there would be no invitation to Pasadena for turkey and singing along to Singing In The Rain and trying to out-eat Mal in satsumas in their pyjamas, this was sadly probably all he and Dom were going to get.

(He’d spent the odd Christmas with girlfriends doing the things people always thought were Christmassy: skiing in the Alps, sleigh-rides in St Petersburg, even a beach retreat in the Maldives, but as cliched as it was for him to admit, Arthur suspected Christmas was at heart about spending it with people who loved you and whom you loved back.)

He took pleasure in tromping over the thick snow, occasionally twisting to glance back at his deep boot prints, heading nowhere in particular. Dom had added a few birds, including a bright red robin that landed on a low branch nearby and promptly started up its cheerful song. Arthur couldn’t help but smile and doff his imaginary cap to the fellow.

“And a fine morning to you, too, sir” he said politely.

The bird whistled again and then hopped off the branch, only to resettle a few trees away.

“Oh, you want me to follow you, do you?” he grinned. There was no-one here, no projections to fill this pocket world, and Arthur allowed himself to lean into being ridiculous for a private moment. It felt nice to be part of a Christmas card, simpler. “Well, lead on, my good fellow.”

He followed the sweet little bird deeper into the woods.

*

There was a man making snow angels in the clearing.

It was fucking Eames.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dresden, Part 2

Arthur scowled at the robin like the traitor it clearly was. He briefly considered dreaming up a bb gun and snuffing it out of existence, but, since it didn’t really exist anyway, what would be the point.

Eames hadn’t seen him yet, so Arthur had a bit of time to decide how to deal with this unexpected intrusion. Also, to strike Dom off his Christmas present list for rehiring the forger. He hoped that somewhere up top, whilst Eames was lying in a lounge chair, hooked up to the PASIV, Dom was pacing back and forth and dwelling on the fact that the unconscious lump stinking up the warehouse with his weird smelling aftershave (“it’s a balm my dear friend Oola makes, Arthur, for my skin”) was the cause of the end of their decade-long friendship.

This Eames- the flat on his back, Christmas Card Eames- seemed fully committed to making the best snow angel he could, whilst massacring the carol ‘Good King Wenceslas.’ His previous attempts lay scattered around the clearing, for all the world as if Eames-sized corpses had fallen out the sky and landed in the cushion of snow. Except Eames was definitely no angel and, sadly, also not a corpse.

Arthur watched as he diligently swept his arms back and forth, fingers balled up into fists, eyes closed tight. He was wearing a scarf that allied him to some London soccer team that Arthur had immediately forgotten the name of but who he had sat through half a match of a while ago on a job, needling Eames about how a team with no Brits, let alone Londoners, could in all honestly be called whatever it was they were incredulously called- Totting Hotchspurn?

He immediately shut down thinking about being spurned.

God. Eva would’ve done in a pinch.

Ugh. Funerals and alcohol were a bad combination.

He wasn’t even _attracted_ to Eames.

Also, it wasn’t a fucking _balm._

He forced himself out from under the cover of the trees, where he most definitely hadn’t been hiding.

“What the fuck, Eames. I thought you were staying out of Germany for a while.”

Eames didn’t reply, continuing instead to sweep his arms back and forth, raising puffs of loose snow into the air that settled onto the front of his peacoat.

“And Wenceslas was a Czech King, not German.”

Eames promptly switched to singing ‘Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum… dum dum di dum dum Christmas tree…”

Arthur frowned and kicked a pile of snow onto the prone figure laid out in front of him. It made absolutely no difference to his appearance or behaviour.

“What are you doing here, Eames?”

He’d expected an answer about the job, about Dom possibly offering him a fee he had most definitely not run past Arthur yet, but Eames stopped singing and finally opened his eyes. He waved an arm out into the clearing.

“I’m working on my snow angels, love. Do you think I’m making progess?”

Arthur glared at him for a moment for being, as per usual, obtuse, then turned and, since there was a) fuck all else to do now Eames had ruined the tranquillity that was Arthur’s lovely Christmas card experience and b) a small hope that he could deliver a savage review of the forger’s childish pastime, stomped over to examine the _seven, for fuck’s sake_ previous attempts.

“The snow at home growing up was always grey and too slushy” Eames called out. “But when we went up North there was ample opportunity to dive in.”

“Up North?”

“Scotland.”

“Wait, so you _are_ Scottish?”

“On me mum’s side. Grandmother and all.”

Arthur’s brain suddenly remembered glimpsing Eames’ thigh muscle under the kilt and he blinked quickly to dislodge the memory, hopefully right out onto the ground in front of him where he could murder it.

“These are travesties” he said.

Eames propped himself up and ineffectively dusted off some of the snow from his body.

“Why don’t you show me how to do it, then?”

And then of course Eames did what he did best: waited until Arthur either broke or shot him in the head.

Arthur folded his arms. Then he unfolded them. Then he glanced at the path he’d taken into the clearing, which would lead him back out again. Then he looked back at the forger. Then he huffed and stomped over to the one patch of deep virgin snow Eames hadn’t violated with his impression.

“Fine.”

“Brilliant.”

Eames clambered out of his shallow grave and trotted over to watch. The traitorous robin joined them to make a three.

*

Arthur gave his beautiful woollen coat a regretful look, then remembered it wasn’t even real, and dropped into a crouch. He glanced over his shoulder to map out the blanket of snow behind him, trying to gauge where all the composite parts of his angel were going to go. When he turned back Eames was staring at him in bewilderment.

“What?!”

“What are you doing?”

“Making a snow angel.”

Eames snorted. “You’re doing it wrong.” He spread his arms out and rocked on his heels. “You can’t just cautiously back into it, Arthur. It’s like falling in love.” He rebalanced himself and extended a hand. “Up you get and do it properly. Otherwise I’m afraid it’s an instant fail. Come on pet, don’t embarrass me in front of all the squirrels.”

Arthur grumbled but allowed himself to be pulled back to his feet. He even let Eames stretch out his arms for him. He’d probably done this as a kid, right? He’d just forgotten, but he could do it. It wasn’t hard. Eames nodded in approval at his new posture.

“Falling in love is nothing like…” was as far as Arthur got before Eames toppled him into the snow. He landed with a shocked thud, the flattened powder seeming to boom as he landed, all the breath pushed out of his lungs.

“How would you know, Arthur?” came the reply from up high. “Now do your wings, otherwise I’m just looking at a white-washed twinky Jesus on the cross.”

Arthur spat snow out of his mouth and lay motionless in protest. He watched Eames frown, then narrow his eyes, then raise an eyebrow, then smirk.

“Eames…whatever you’re considering…”

A moment later he had a heavy forger straddling his hips, in what was almost certainly now a really indecent looking Christmas card. The fucking robin was chirping in encouragement. Eames leaned over him until the lean was more of a loom. Arthur swallowed and didn’t meet his eye.

“Do your wings, pet. You know what to do. Up and down, up and down.”

Arthur’s arms twitched but that was as much as he dared trust them to do. He had a distinct impression they wanted to maybe reach for his gun, or disloyally, for Eames’ waist.

“This is rubbish. You lead me to believe you knew what you were doing” the forger complained, clearly amused.

“I do know what I’m doing” Arthur said weakly- and boy had he told some lies in the past, also his whole job involved lying on a regular basis, but prone on his back in not real snow with an unpredictable Englishman in his lap, this felt like the biggest, realest lie he’d ever told in his life.

Eames honest to God carefully took hold of Arthur’s wrists and moved them back and forth in the snow. Neither of them said anything whilst it happened, so Arthur just got to listen to the swoosh swoosh of snow being swept to the sides and stare at Eames’ way-to-close face. After the first few swooshes Eames resumed his singing of the original carol he’d been part way through when Arthur had first encountered him, matching the words to their shared movements.

“Deep….and crisp….and even…”

When it came to dealing with the most confusing, unwanted boner he’d ever had in his life, Arthur had absolutely no regrets in his decision to shoot himself in the head. 

*

When he awoke in the warehouse he allowed himself a moment to think _oh thank fuck that’s over_ before he glanced over at the lounge chair bearing the recently-rehired-without-his-permission forger.

Except the chair was empty.

He blinked and looked again, just to make sure, but there was no Eames’ sleeping body, no arm flopped to the side, canula linking him to the PASIV. Nothing. Arthur ripped his own line out without thought, winced and pulled himself to his feet. He was absolutely horrified to see he was still sort of hard. That almost _never_ happened in dreamshare. What the ever loving fuck.

“Dom!” he yelled angrily. “Dom!”

Cobb appeared a minute later just as Arthur had the presence of mind to drop back on the chair and cover his lap with his jacket.

“Done already?” Cobb said. “How was the wood? I tried to make it all peaceful and….”

“Where the hell is Eames?!” Arthur barked out, gesticulating at the still empty lounger. “How the fuck did he get into my dream when he’s not wired up to our PASIV?! And I told you I didn’t want to use him for this job so why did you go against my wishes and bring him in?!”

Cobb raised his hands in defence, confusion written all over his face.

“What happened down there? Are you alright?”

Arthur scowled. “Where is he?”

Cobb looked at him with concern. “I don’t know. Last thing I heard he was heading back to Mombasa. Arthur…”

“No. Clearly he’s in Dresden because I just spent ten very uncomfortable minutes with him down there and…”

Cobb frowned. “What were you two doing?”

Arthur decided it was for the best not to answer that question. Because holy hell the answer made him sound insane. “Doesn’t matter. But seriously, how did he…if he’s not linked up then…”

Cobb came nearer and slowly sat down next to his point man. He was telegraphing concern and confusion and Arthur didn’t really like the look of it.

“Arthur” Cobb explained cautiously “Eames isn’t here. He hasn’t been here this whole time. If you saw him in your dream then it was just your projection.”

Arthur let the words sink in.

His subconscious had imagined up the forger all by itself.

And then decided it kind of wanted to have sex with him. In a wood. After making snow angels together.

Maybe it had been too soon for him to come back to work after all.

“Are you alright?” Cobb asked gently.

“I fucking wish Mal was here” Arthur moaned. “Also I think I might be broken.”

Cobb sighed and patted his arm. “Well, tell me at least that you met my robin?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madrid

Eames turned down the next two jobs. Cobb figured it was probably time to ask Arthur about it, and had just about summoned up the resolve to do so- because, _Jesus,_ he just knew that sticking his oar into whatever maelstrom his point man and forger had managed to bewilderingly stir up between them was going to be awkward- but then Eames signed on for the Madrid extraction.

Of course the job went South within a week when it turned out to be a sting from a rival team trying to steal their PASIV equipment. Arthur and Eames went on the run with the gear whilst Cobb frantically called in some favours and rustled up more accurate intel on who they were _really_ dealing with.

But by the time he had rendezvoused with Arthur in a safe house a hundred a fifty miles away in Mogarraz it was too late to hope things might go back to normal: after Arthur and Eames had both fallen through some scaffolding in a dramatic Madrid rooftop chase and Eames had landed badly his knee Arthur had simply scooped up the two PASIV cases and scarpered.

“So… you just left him?” Cobb said.

“What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well then.”

“Is he…?”

Arthur shrugged. “He didn’t answer his phone.”

“You called him?” Maybe that was a good start at least.

“I sent him a text.” Or maybe not. Cobb had been on the receiving end of Arthur’s texts. William Shakespeare he was not.

“What did you say?”

Arthur’s face shuttered and Cobb sighed and repeated his question.

“ _‘The equipment is undamaged.’_ ”

“That was it? Arthur… you abandoned him in an alley…”

“What?! That gear is worth about a hundred thousand dollars, Dom. Eames’ stupid kneecap is worth a hell of a lot less. Besides, he fucked it up when he was a kid playing fucking rugby anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me at some point. Though, uh, who knows if that’s even a true story, knowing him. I asked him to explain the rules once and he was very vague. And I think lewd? Because he mentioned ‘hookers’ so…”

Cobb let a moment of silence pass, which he hoped Arthur was filling with thoughts about the fact that Eames took the time to tell him stories- true or otherwise- which was indicative of two people being friends rather than enemies- and friends should perhaps not be left to lie hurt in a pile of broken scaffolding whilst other friends run off without even a goodbye.

Alas, all Arthur seemed to be contemplating was how best to nibble the fat green olive he'd fished out of a bowl in front of him. Cobb watched him deposit the stone on a napkin and despaired.

“Well, let me know if he texts back” he said, without much hope.

*

Eames did, in fact, text back.

_Well my equipment isn’t, you heartless, quisling piece of shit._

*

Arthur read the message, looked up ‘quisling,’ went to the bathroom and gargled some mouthwash whilst glaring into the mirror, spat out the blue froth, returned to his phone and punched out a reply.

_What was I supposed to do? Make out with you in the alley and hope they didn’t recognise us?_

_*_

Arthur had an on-again, off-again relationship with regret, but sending that message was something he wished he hadn’t done. He’d been annoyed because Dom had called him out on his decision-making, and Gods damnit he was the point-man, his decision-making was his calling card. Plus, he knew his instinct to preserve the PASIVs was the right call: without them none of them would have jobs and then where would they be? Dom wouldn’t be able to get back to see his kids one day, Eames wouldn’t be able to…uh, Arthur wasn’t really sure what Eames spent his money on: gambling obviously, but he knew the forger didn’t throw stupid amounts at the tables. He played to keep sharp, for the thrill, not for the winnings, which was fortunate because Eames was hit and miss with his successes, dependent upon him being arsed to make an effort or not. Arthur had beaten him at Connect 4 eleven times in a row once and Eames had foolishly staked his great grandfather’s (probably not his great grandfather’s- he was such a fucking liar, Eames) WW2 Royal Air Force Longines on the outcome. Arthur had shoved the watch in his bedside drawer behind one box of unopened condoms and three boxes of aspirin even though he was 80% sure it was a fake.

The point was, he’d made the right decision in the alley. They’d all thank him for it later.

*

Eames did not thank him for it for the next four months.

Then some guy called Yusuf left him a confusing voice message asking him to come to a hotel in Mombasa because someone called Merlin had a job for him.

Arthur didn’t put two and ridiculous two together until it was too late and he slid the keycard in the door, Glock in the other hand, to find himself faced with a handsome, clean-shaven man in a really well-tailored suit pointing a similar gun in his face.

“Um…” was all Arthur managed, before Eames dropped the weapon on the floor, flew off the bed and wrapped him up in a smothering embrace.

“Oh thank the bloody powers that be you’re here. I’ve missed you so much.”

Arthur just about managed to turn his head, bear hug notwithstanding and glare out a bewildered look at the man sat awkwardly in the armchair to one side. The stranger raised a tentative hand and smiled weakly.

“Hi, I’m Yusuf. You must be Merlin’s husband. He’s like…he’s really really drugged right now, but, uh…that’s actually not my fault- for once.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MOMBASA, part 1

Yusuf watched Merlin’s husband (“not his husband”) stalk around Merlin’s apartment (“not called Merlin, _Jesus_ ”) aimlessly opening and closing drawers, sifting through bills and at one point sniffing a scented candle with what Yusuf felt was undue suspicion. The sedated forger, whose real name was apparently ‘Eames’ (“not his real name, probably, but it’s what we call him”) and who had in his paranoid state tried to garrotte their first two taxi drivers en route back from the hotel, lay passed out on the couch, his big socked feet showing their soles to all the world, his shoes lined up neatly where Yusuf had left them (“not his butler, just dump him there.”)

It was now just himself and this Arthur person and Arthur’s interrogations to keep them company, which was a shame really, as Yusuf liked not-Merlin, though he was finding not-Merlin’s not-husband quite a negative sort of fellow so far. He was definitely coming round to the idea that they were unlikely to be in love with each other.

Yusuf had had quite the week already, and all of this weirdness just sort of slotted right in. He’d had a job, then lost a job, then his cat had had kittens somewhere in his lab but hidden them so Yusuf could hear them meowing but that was all, then the Englishman from the cancelled job had stumbled in all crazy and blabbering and the cat had chosen that moment to appear with three bundles of fur in her mouth and now there was a stranger with a gun prowling around the apartment wanting to murder something.

The kettle began to whistle on the stove, so he got up from his chair and headed to the kitchen to make a pot of tea.

“Do you want tea, Mr…uh…Arthur?” he called out.

“Is there coffee?”

Yusuf rummaged around in the narrow cupboard without success. He didn’t immediately give up hope though, as the cupboard had been crammed full of various mismatched mugs, teapots and different kinds of tea, so it was possible the coffee was stored elsewhere. He came across an unmarked tin in the next cupboard along, sniffed its dark, cakey contents and shrugged.

“Maybe?” he finally replied. “Although maybe there might only be gravy powder.”

Arthur joined him in the kitchen and complained “who has gravy but not coffee?”

Yusuf turned and grinned. “Englishmen, of course.”

Arthur opened the narrow cupboard Yusuf had begun his search in. “Why has he got…one, two, three…four fucking teapots?”

“I refer you to my previous answer” Yusuf said.

Arthur compromised by rooting out some peppermint tea and they spent the next few minutes in the rituals of steeping and stirring until that was done and it was time to resume the conversation that was Arthur asking what the fuck was going on and Yusuf trying to get through the explanation without being interrupted by an impatient, sweary, well-dressed American.

He recounted how had been working as a chemist in the dreamshare business for a while before he took on this particular job. He’d been brought on late when their original chemist had backed out. There was some sort of disagreement mid prep between the extractor and her point person about abducting someone close to the mark, and then he’d got a phone call saying the entire job was off. The next thing he knew Eames was stumbling into his lab, throwing up in his sink and blabbering about literal kidnapping and sabotage and ‘keelhauling being too good for some people.’

“What’s keelhauling?”

“You’ll have to ask him when he’s back to his old self” Yusuf said, getting back to his account. “As far as I can gather, when Eames got wind of it he got an armful of unregulated chemicals in his bloodstream for his trouble. It’s an easy way to get rid of someone in this business and Mombasa’s the perfect place for an ex-pat to end up ex-alive. The authorities would put it down to the euphemistic ‘misadventure’ - a catch-all for drugs, gambling debts or sex acts gone horribly wrong.”

Eames _looked_ like he could fall into any of those categories but since he was a forger by profession Yusuf wasn’t fool enough to make assumptions. Also- not that you could draw conclusions from someone’s interior decorating choices about their vices- but the comfy reading chair and pile of nerdy books next to it suggested he wasn’t a junkie or too much of a pervert. He risked a glance (for science!) at Arthur's restrictive trousers and surely-uncomfortable, verging-on-bondage tailoring and decided the jury was out on this other guy. Because why would you do that to yourself? 

“Do we know who this chemist is?” Arthur bit out.

Yusuf noted the tone and sighed. “Yes. And I’m kicking myself for not asking more questions when I signed on. He’s notoriously vindictive- I suspect that’s why the team originally ditched him for me, but obviously he negotiated his way back onto the job. Don’t worry- I’ll deal with him.”

Arthur threw him a sceptical look but Yusuf held his gaze. “Try not to get fooled by the cosy cardigan. I have multiple PHDs in Chemistry and Pharmacology and skills that make Ivy league grads look like bartenders. And I take the reputation and responsibilities of dreamshare chemists very seriously. Science should better the experience of being alive, not make back street assassinations easier to get away with."

“I’d rather just shoot him” Arthur said bluntly.

“Too bad” Yusuf replied. “I have dibs.”

Arthur nodded once, which Yusuf took to mean the matter was closed. He turned his mug slightly and asked “So why do you need me?”

“Someone has to watch our boy. I need to get back to my lab to analyse what they gave him and make up an antidote. It’s been in his system for much longer than I expected- that’s a mystery.”

“So I’m a babysitter?”

“I estimate he got dosed about 12 hours ago. He somehow managed to make it to my lab before everything started kicking in, I ran a triage tox-screen and then when I couldn’t mix up an antidote immediately, decided to call in help.”

Arthur frowned. “And I was the nearest help? You were lucky I was in Addis Ababa.”

Yusuf shrugged. “After I got into his phone I scrolled through his messages. They were all deleted….”

“Well, in our business that’s standard protocol.”

“…apart from one from you.”

Arthur blew carefully over the lip of his steaming cup of tea. “Oh” he said lightly “What did it say?”

Yusuf felt a little embarrassed bringing it up, but he had been asked. “Uhm…something about making out with him in an alleyway. That, coupled with your names, made me assume you were his…you were significant and therefore the right person to call.”

“Our names?”

“Merlin and Arthur. I'm assuming they're pet names? You know…”

He heard the American groan like he was in actual pain. “I fucking hate him” he murmured under his breath, a moment later.

“Really? I actually quite liked him the first time I met him. He’s amiable.”

“He’s a fucking liability is what he is” Arthur replied, waving a hand around to summarise the situation they were in. “Tell me more about the chemistry.”

“Well you’ve met our friends heightened paranoia, selective amnesia and emotional whiplash. Which, by the way, is a super interesting combination. I’d love to know what was in this cocktail so I can maybe replicate…”

“So you can maybe cook up an antidote” Arthur corrected, firmly. Yusuf hadn’t actually seen the gun again after that initial meeting in the hotel, but something in Arthur’s tone of voice suddenly reminded him of its presence.

“Yes, yes of course. I actually thought the paranoia might win out when you came through the hotel door, but I guess not?”

Arthur didn’t offer up an explanation so Yusuf pressed on.

“He was pretty bad the first few hours after I found him- freaking out and suchlike. I dosed him to bring down his adrenaline levels but I think that may have tipped him the other way, judging by the reception you got. You know…the hugging.”

“But he trusts you?”

Yusuf shrugged and played with the fabric of his clothing. “When he remembers who I am. I like to think my love of soft, friendly cardigans does a lot of the legwork for me. Why does he trust you?”

“Because he’s a contrary bastard.”

Yusuf grinned. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” There was a ghost of something affectionate under that hard explanation and Yusuf caught it trying to secretly sublimate its way out without him noticing. Too bad. Nothing got past Yusuf. “Just thinking about chemistry.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes but didn’t pursue it.

“So you’ll stay?”

*

Arthur reckoned that the only thing worse than having a sex dream whilst lying in bed next to your colleague was waking up and realising it wasn’t a dream and you really were being ever so slowly and magnificently jerked off.

He could feel Eames’ mouth gently exploring the back of his neck whilst his hand, _fuck,_ whilst his hand was in Arthur’s boxers and deftly presenting him with a time-sensitive moral dilemma the likes of which Arthur was just not qualified to handle.

Gods. It’d been a while. And it felt so, _so_ good.

Eames kissed the nub at the top of his spine and Arthur immediately clamped his own hand over the forger’s, stopping it dead. He felt Eames still and took the opportunity to peel the trespassing miracle out of his shorts.

“Well that’s the most disappointing extraction I’ve ever experienced” came the bemused reply, breath all warm over his ear.

Arthur scrambled right out of the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. He hauled himself out of his t-shirt and boxers, forced himself under the cold stream of water and valiantly avoided dealing with his totally bereft dick.

He’d babysat as a teenager, a million years ago.

It hadn’t been anything like this.

When he came back into the bedroom, wrapped primly in a towel, he stalked over to the bedside table and picked up the notepad and pen that lay there. Eames didn’t say anything, just remained propped up on the pillow, circumspect and curious.

Arthur scanned the list already written there:

_DON’T PANIC. YOU JUST HAVE INTERMITTENT AMNESIA._

_DON’T LEAVE THE APARTMENT, BECAUSE YOU’LL GET LOST._

_DON’T LOOK FOR YOUR GUN, BECAUSE IT’S SOMEWHERE SAFE._

_DON’T ATTACK YUSUF, BECAUSE HE’S HERE TO HELP._

He printed a new imperative and tossed the notepad at Eames’ head.

_DON'T TOUCH ARTHUR'S DICK._

Eames read it and tilted his head to the side. “Traditionally you supply a ‘because.’

“Because I don’t want you to.”

Eames let his gaze slide down to Arthur’s groin area and raised a bemused eyebrow. “It didn’t seem that way before when…”

Arthur threw the pen at him as well.

“I mean it, Eames. You were well out of line. I was fucking asleep.”

Eames dropped the mirth and nodded sincerely. “Yeah. Sorry. I was just…I woke up and you were all pressed up against my side and I forgot that we aren’t….” he waved his hand between them “plus you, er, well your…”

Arthur jabbed his finger at the forger’s face. “It was morning. It happens to all guys in the morning. It’s just a normal bodily response.”

“I know.”

“So stop with the….”

“I’m just trying to explain….”

“Just read the fucking note when you wake up next time.”

“The note will help.”

“And maybe never talk to me about this again.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Alright.”

Eames reread the note. “You have serial killer handwriting.”

“I will kill you with that pen Eames if you talk to me about this again, understand?”

“I do.”

Arthur huffed and stalked over to his overnight bag for some clean clothes. He noted with woe that he was running out and he absolutely did not have the time nor the inclination to buy anything from Mombasa- the likely culprit of some of Eames' more eye-searing patterned numbers. 

“How are you feeling today?”

Eames shrugged and shifted further up in the bed. “Still disorientated. Like, I think it’s better now that I remember I know you, but it’s rubbish that I don’t remember _how_ I know you.”

“I think, sexual assault aside, I got off lightly. You haven’t tried to kill me, unlike Yusuf.”

Eames groaned. Yesterday he’d delivered an elbow smash to the chemist’s face in an attempt to flee the apartment, an unfortunate event that had caused Arthur to revise leaving Eames unsupervised until Yusuf had a definitive antidote. “Yeah. I do feel bad about that.”

“Any murderous thoughts today?”

“I could murder some lorne sausage.”

“I don’t even know what that is, Eames. And if its some sort of euphemism…”

“Hold your horses, pet. It’s just breakfast food. Fat chance of getting any in Casablanca.”

Arthur paused from buttoning up his new shirt and sighed.

“Oh. So…we’re not in Casablanca?”

“Mombasa.”

“I have a flat there.”

“We’re in it, dumbass.”

“Oh.”

Arthur watched Eames reread the note of imperatives and resigned himself to more of the same for the next few days.

Well, hopefully not _all_ more of the same, obviously.

God he hated working with Eames.

*


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mombasa, part 2

Eames woke up, rolled away from the sleeping form next to him, read the note on the bedside table and tried to remember who he was, with very little success. He dressed, made some tea, flicked through the local paper and defaced the crossword with Old English insults. It was incredibly frustrating that he couldn’t remember the name of his mother, but he could remember ‘fustylugs.’

He itched to leave the flat, but Arthur’s prohibition was clear, so instead he waited until the American was awake and more likely to being persuaded otherwise. Unfortunately, when the time came both Arthur and the man currently sleeping on Eames sofa- Yusuf judging again by the note- both declared it a bad idea. Eames scowled and took himself and his frustration to the little balcony overlooking the city, where he smoked half a cigarette, felt nauseous and flicked the rest down to the quiet alley below. Yusuf gave him a box a nicotine patches he’d found in the bathroom cabinet and Eames stuck himself with two, partly out of restless pique. Of course, later in the day the action gave Arthur another opportunity to contradict him.

“Those patches don’t work, Eames. Going cold turkey is the only way to give up smoking” Arthur snipped. “Although I commend you trying. Cancer etc.”

Eames turned from the ironing board in the narrow laundry room his apartment inexplicably seemed to have, and noted the other man’s wince of displeasure, which he had to deduce from the minimal options, was likely down to the tattoos visible on his bare chest.

He didn’t remember getting any of them.

This was the second attempt at ironing this particular shirt, and he was both curious and a little irked that he couldn’t figure out why he had felt shamed into returning here and taking it off. He suspected his house guest had something to do with it. _Why_ said house guest had followed him was a mystery. Eames did not, as he had pointed out earlier that day, need a babysitter.

“You seem like someone who cadges cigarettes when they’re drunk” he postulated in retaliation.

“I don’t.”

He added an addendum. “Because you secretly think smoking is cool.”

“I don’t.”

Eames allowed himself a small victorious grin. He lifted the crisped-up shirt and looked for Arthur’s approval. Instead he got disdain.

“What?!” he groaned. “What is wrong with it?”

“Nothing an incinerator can't fix.”

Eames waggled a finger at Arthur’s stained white t-shirt. “You have bloody piccalilli smeared all over yourself. I am not sure you should be so quick to judge.”

Arthur scowled. “Why don’t you have jam like normal people? What the fuck even is piccalilli?”

Something like endearment jolted through him when Arthur said the word ‘jam’ instead of jelly- although the changeable emotions the man evoked in him was akin to mild travel sickness. He wondered if it was just these particular circumstances or if their relationship was always like this. He wanted to follow the thread further, see if it jogged his memory. From what he could gather, concessions to other people’s ways of doing things weren’t something in Arthur's repertoire, so this choice of word seemed anomalous, and therefore to Eames, intriguing.

“Did you lose the right to use the word ‘jelly’ in some sort of competition between us?” he probed. 

Arthur looked confused. “Did I do what?”

“Don’t worry pet, I’m sure I’ve lost things to you, too. It probably all…comes out in the wash.” He waggled his eyebrows at their location.

Arthur sighed and rolled his eyes. “What are you going on about Eames? Just put your fucking horrible shirt on already.”

“You’re the one lurking in the laundry room Arthur.”

“Yusuf is fucking _asleep on the couch_. After pulling a late night concocting an antidote to unscramble your brains.”

“Fine. Fine. Do you know how I got any of these tattoos?” Eames asked, threading his arms through the shirt sleeves and shrugging the material over his shoulders. He watched Arthur’s gaze settle on his chest, less disgusted and more contemplative, but didn’t get a reply.

“Arthur?”

Arthur’s eyes snapped back up. “I might have asked. At some point. You know. But you probably bullshitted me anyway, so….”

Eames took in Arthur’s neatly combed-back hair, his cleanly-shaven face, his delicate bare feet poking out of his tartan pyjamas. The piccalilli stain was a terrible blemish on his otherwise neat-as-a-pin appearance.

“Have you and I ever…” Eames asked curiously.

“What?” Arthur replied, though the reply was so quick Eames could tell he understood perfectly well.

“Is there something between us?”

“No.”

“Is that a lie?”

“No.”

“Have you lied to me, since this whole…since you’ve been here?”

“No.”

Eames narrowed his eyes. He trusted that third no about as much as he trusted JamboJet airlines not to lose his luggage ( _Gods it was annoying what his scrambled egg brain chose to remember)_ so he shifted past Arthur back into the living room area and nudged Yusuf awake from his nap on the sofa.

“Yusuf. Am I a good poker player?”

“What? Uh…” Yusuf yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Poker? Yes. The day we met you told me you’d just won 170,000 shillings at the Senator. I was sceptical so you took me there the next night, where you won an additional 90,000. And then my car.”

“I won you a car?!”

Yusuf frowned. “No. You won it _off me.”_

Eames smiled and patted the chemist amiably on the shoulder. “I hereby bequeath the car back to you, my friend.”

“Well, all things considered I think that’s only fair” Yusuf yawned “Since I have recently saved your life.”

“Exactly” Eames replied, returning to his feet. “How’s my blackjack?”

Yusuf shook his head. “Poker’s your game. People-reading.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

He strolled back into the laundry room. Arthur was nonchalantly studying the back of a detergent box, which meant he was alert and suspicious and tensed up as hell.

“Have you recently lied to me in _written form_?” Eames asked lightly, watching his shoulders. Eames knew that his own tell was his hands, but he’d already deduced Arthur showed it in his shoulders.

“What?”

Eames stored that deflection away, turned and began collapsing the ironing board. He was aware of Arthur’s silence and immobility behind him, manifestations of apprehension if he had to guess. He wondered what it meant. What any of it meant. He thought about asking a follow-up, but when he twisted back Arthur had defaulted to eyeballing the washing machine the way worn-down insurgents eyeball aid offered by their sworn enemies.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake Arthur. It’s not going to eat your poncy shirts.”

He watched Arthur put his bare foot on the lower part of the machine and shoved it suspiciously.

“Why do you have a fucking Stasi era German washing machine, Eames?” he muttered.

“Vorsprung fucking Durch Technik, pet. Why do you think those Panzer tanks were such a ball-ache to blow up during the war? Now put your fancy stuff in there already or please deign to borrow some of my _clean_ clothes, already.”

Arthur did neither.

Eames wished he could remember the circumstances that led to his life containing such a dangerous, ridiculous, entirely fetching human being, he really did.

*

The next morning Eames woke up, rolled away from the sleeping form next to him, read the note on the bedside table and tried to again remember who he was, with not much more success. He showered, dressed, ate breakfast and pottered about the flat until Yusuf stirred from the sofa and then he had someone to share a pot of tea with. Arthur appeared an hour later, and immediately once again shot down Eames’ request to let him be more proactive in hunting down the rogue chemist.

“You’re currently useless, is what I’m getting at” Arthur said.

“Oh” Eames replied. “Well that’s not very flattering.”

“Normally you’re super competent” the point man conceded, cleaning his gun in what Eames noted seemed an instinctive way. “Well, with the occasional…blind spot.”

Eames frowned.

“There was that time in Egypt. When you spelled Pharaoh wrong on all our faked dig credentials.”

“I’ve been to Egypt?”

“Obviously.”

“Did it matter?”

“To the antiquities dealer looking over ‘Dr Eamon Cornish’s’ C.V. it did.”

“But I spelled Egypt right, right? That bugger’s tricky.”

“The camel had already bolted by then, Eames. With our potential earnings.”

Eames shrugged, then added “I’m surprised I took a job in Egypt.”

Arthur asked why.

“Well, I hate sand.”

“Reasons?” Yusuf enquired, topping up their cups with the teapot. Something in the back of Eames’ mind was relieved it was the blue and white Burleigh one with the chipped lid rather than the one shaped like a house from a Charles Dickens novel, though he wasn’t sure why that mattered.

“It’s coarse.”

Yusuf nodded and added “And rough.”

“And irritating.” Eames caught Arthur’s eye and waited. Arthur refused to take the bait.

“And it gets everywhere” Eames finished, tutting his disappointment at the American, who for his part sighed dramatically as he clunked all the parts of his weapon back together.

“Really. _That_ you still remember?” he lamented, getting up and heading for the kitchen. “If it was me I’d be thankful to block out that movie.”

Eames doffed his imaginary hat to Yusuf.

“How do we know each other again?”

Yusuf smiled conspiratorially as he wiped some saline on Eames’ arm. The drugs were to curtail the violent paranoia Eames had apparently exhibited when first dosed up, though Eames didn’t remember any of it. Or providing Yusuf with the black eye he still sported. It was a relief that Yusuf had promised an actual antidote later that day.

“We work in the heady business of illegal dream-sharing, extracting information for rich clients. I’m the chemist. I make all the cool compounds that put us to sleep.”

Eames pointed at himself “And I’m like…the Chief Dreamer?”

Yusuf shook his head. “Not an actual job.”

“Am I the Dream… Catcher?”

He heard Arthur scoff loudly through the open kitchen door.

Yusuf pushed the needle in. “This should rebalance your body’s natural chemical makeup to some extent, but it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. It’s a rapid flush but I can’t guarantee what symptom gets flushed out first. I guess we’ll know the next time you wake up.”

He turned his head and yelled back into the kitchen. “Arthur! It’s likely to get worse before it gets better!”

Eames looked down at his hands. His knuckles were scuffed, probably from fighting. “Ah, I’m like the manly bodyguard who protects everyone with my impressive fighting skills.”

Arthur returned with a piece of toast in his mouth. “Nah, that’s me” he quipped, mid munch. “Mostly you just swan around the place pretending to be a pretty girl and distracting everyone from the task at hand.”

Eames took a moment to process this strange new information, provided so casually by a lean, boyish person in pyjamas. Then he cocked his head and smirked. “Everyone?”

The lump of toast paused on its way down the bodyguard’s throat. It was interesting that the rest of the answer came in the form of Arthur walking away and burying his head in the daily newspaper. Eames would put good money on the fact he couldn’t read Swahili. 

“You’re a forger” Yusuf explained. “It’s an incredible skill you have, in my humble opinion. You impersonate others and in the dream trick the mark into thinking they’re talking to someone they trust, so they’ll give up the information more readily."

“I pretend to be other people?”

The chemist nodded enthusiastically.

“Anyway” Yusuf continued, sliding Eames’ cup away from him. “You’re going to want to have a nice long afternoon nap slash mini-coma as soon as the drugs start to kick in, so no more caffeine for you. I’m popping out to feed the kittens, pick up the final dose for you and see if our nefarious chemist has returned to his place of work yet.”

“Be careful” Arthur called out from behind the paper.

“Of course,” Yusuf replied, “Kitten claws can be murder.”

Yusuf gathered up his things and waved a friendly goodbye at the door. After he’d gone Eames moved to the armchair containing the alleged bodyguard and placed his forefinger on the top edge of the paper. He gently nudged the sheet down until he could see Arthur’s face, resplendent in his nerdy black reading glasses. That must mean he’d finally run out of contact lens fluid. He’d already thrown the world’s least effective hissy fit that morning when he’d run out of clean clothes. Eames oscillated confusingly between finding him adorable in pyjamas and feeling like it was a terrible violation of some really important taboo he just couldn’t remember.

“I get that I’m a forger. But I can’t remember what kind of person I really am” he said.

Arthur folded the paper up and lay it in his lap. He looked up at Eames, narrowed his eyes and replied “I already said. You’re super competent.”

“That’s not really what I meant” he clarified, letting some genuine sadness leak out.

Arthur’s next answer was both more committed and less relevant. “You’re English. Mostly? I think.”

Eames took a moment to parse that strange statement. Why Arthur had thoughts about his nationality was unclear. He then raised an eyebrow to indicate he still wasn’t satisfied.

“Come on Arthur. It’s unsettling and quite frankly scaring the bejesus out of me. You and I are friends, presumably. Throw me a boner. Please.”

Arthur scowled.

“Too soon?” Eames apologised.

“What did I say about talking about that?”

Eames raised his hands in placation. “I’m sorry. Blame it on the lack of memories to draw from. I have, like, three days of personal history and that’s it at the moment.”

Arthur made a dissatisfied noise.

“But fair enough. Sorry. Still…” Eames sighed “I feel a bit lost here, mate.”

Arthur pursed his lips and Eames saw his eyes shift indecisively, but then there was a small nod and a tentative smile. He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Okay. But for fuck’s sake, stop looming over me like fucking Big Ben or something.”

Eames grinned and dropped onto the sofa nearby.

“And before you tell me, I _know_ that Big Ben is technically the name of the bell. Because you already told me, years ago. Because you are a walking, talking bottle of Wite-Out, is what kind of person you are.”

“Whiteout?”

“Correction fluid.”

“Oh. Tippex.”

“See? But only if the error is absolutely trivial and doesn’t matter one iota to what is happening in the moment. So, you also have a terrible sense of perspective.”

“You corrected me about the sharks” Eames replied, the memory surfacing out of nowhere.

Arthur blanched. “You remember that night?”

“Just the sharks thing” Eames said, curious as to why Arthur looked relieved. “Were we in some awful situation that involved sharks? Bloody hell, dreamshare is clearly a very dangerous profession. Although that guy trying to kill me perhaps suggests I already knew that. Is there danger money? Am I rich then?”

Arthur huffed. “Which of those ridiculous questions do you want me to prioritise?”

*

Arthur compromised and trusted Eames to be left on his own whilst he went out. Eames read for a while, then wandered to the bedroom and stood in the doorway. He glanced over at the notepad on the far bedside table for a moment, the one containing _the lie_ , then carried Arthur’s travel bag into the laundry room.

*


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mombasa, part 3

Arthur succumbed to bolstering the Kenyan economy by purchasing new underwear and socks, but halfway through wandering around the brashly lit Nyali Shopping Centre he lost the will to live and decided to head back to the apartment. There would be dry-cleaning services at the hotel next to the airport when he was done with Mombasa: he’d pay for a room just to wait for his clothes to be clean if needs be. He also admitted to himself that the thought of leaving Eames and Yusuf unprotected weighed heavily on him and the more time he spent out the less comfortable he was with it. Eames might not remember being recently almost murdered and Yusuf may be a scientist with noble ideals about humanity, but Arthur was well aware of the threat level. The thugs might come back- in this business half-finished jobs rarely existed- and although under normal circumstances Eames was a brutally efficient fighter, with his amnesia he was more likely to try and politely talk his way out of being shot in the head. Arthur snatched some bread and coffee and less than an hour after he’d left he was slotting his keys back into the front door, Glock in the other hand just in case.

He called out a greeting and heard Eames muffled reply from the bedroom. Yusuf, it seemed, was still out at the lab. As he dumped the shopping bag and his jacket down on the armchair he could also hear the low rumble of the washing machine going, which was unfortunate as he had planned to run his new underwear through a quick wash to- perhaps over-optimistically- try and coax the material into pretending not to be cheap. He retrieved the bag again and headed in there to check how long was left on the cycle.

He was uncertain what temperature the load was on as the machine was so old the dial markings were worn away, but all his clothing, including his hand-stitched Italian shirts, apparently still needed another 20 minutes of being flung around, wrung out and probably boiled to death before they were done. Arthur revised his to-do list: the assassins weren’t needed- he would finish the job for them.

“Eames! Get in here!”

A moment later a sleep-ruffled forger appeared in the doorway. Arthur immediately launched into his space and shoved him crossly in the chest.

“You fucking put my stuff in your fucking Nazi washer!”

Eames yawned and folded his arms. “Stop being so precious. Everything was dirty. Also stop conflating all of 20th Century German history: you’re better than your American high school education.”

“Each of those shirts probably costs more than your monthly rent, you dick!”

Eames shook his head and mumbled something but over the turbulence of the machine Arthur couldn’t hear him.

“What?!”

Eames sidled past him and pushed a button. The roar disappeared. “I said ‘well who’s the idiot there then?’ Look, I’ll buy you new ones if they are ruined. Apparently, I’m quite solvent.”

Arthur flailed a critical arm toward the machine, now cross it _wasn’t_ washing his clothes. “It was mid cycle!”

This earned him an incredulous eyebrow. “I took a punt on it being more important I hear your grievances than hospitably continue doing your washing for you” Eames reciprocated. “You’re going to have to choose, pet.”

“Don’t call me pet.” Why he remembered his nicknames for Arthur, but not that they drove Arthur up the wall, beggared belief.

“Alright, darling.”

Arthur would’ve snapped at that, too, but the alternative- Eames saying his name- was privately worse. Something about the way Eames pronounced it had always vexed him. In his more paranoid moments he’d thought he sensed some colonial ‘land-grab’ going on- as if the name itself was British and Eames was subtly coaxing it out of Arthur’s possession and back over the pond. Sometimes though it was just that the siren cadence of Eames’ voice seemed to wind its way into his thoughts and settle there like a dangerous animal Arthur wanted to fatally pet. He mostly recognised this was delusional and had instead over the years become adept at just blocking all of this out. Unfortunately, today, his shields were down, his shirts were ruined, and he couldn’t stop his attention snagging once more on the sound.

“That’s not the point. You touched my stuff!”

“I’ve touched your stuff plenty. I’ve touched your lovely junk, if you want to really get into it, so…”

“This always happens with you!” Arthur went on, escalating his frustration more as a means to avoid thinking about what he’d just heard than anything else. “Every job there’s something…”

“…We’re not on a job.”

“…Every single fucking job! This is why I never want to work with you. But does Cobb listen? Oh no. ‘Eames is the best….we need Eames…go get Eames Arthur…thanks a million Eames here’s a big bunch of flowers…”

“I literally don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Shut up!” Arthur snapped. “This is what I’m talking about. This. All of this. Ugh!”

He was aware he was over-reacting, but this entire week had taken it out of him. First the anxiety that came with being summoned to Mombasa on a sketchy job offer; then seeing the usually ten-steps-ahead of everyone, fucking Machiavellian forger all disorientated and hurt; then being cooped up in the apartment with nothing much to do but put his faith in a chemist he didn’t know, all the while trying to remain vigilant in case the bastards who’d done this came back.

Eames was correct of course: it wasn’t a job. It was personal, and that brought with it its own weight of emotions and worry. Fuck. He needed this to be over, to be gone from Kenya, to be by himself again.

He needed to not be so close to Eames.

The detergent smelt like pine trees.

He kept looking at the sky and expecting it to snow.

Eames unfolded his arms and leaned back against the silent washing machine. Arthur took some calming breaths.

“I’m...frustrated.”

“Imagine how I feel” came the quiet reply.

Arthur breathed in more of the distinct smell, ran his eyes over the pile of clean bedlinen. Eames had laundered their sheets. Because he was surprisingly domesticated. And probably because he was under house-arrest and had nothing much to do except wait and hope a chemist he’d just met and a guy who regularly yelled his disapproval at him put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

“This is a shitty thing that’s happened to you. I’m sorry” Arthur eventually said, softer.

Eames sighed. “It’s not your fault. Yusuf tells me it’s a perilous business we work in.”

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

Arthur sighed. “Sometimes it’s exhilarating. Sometimes it’s just tedious. Sometimes it’s…”

“Fun?”

Arthur glanced back at him on the other side of the space but didn’t say anything. Eames pressed on, his voice plaintive and rueful, the casualness he’d entered the room with minutes ago now entirely gone. Whether it was because he’d properly woken up or because his mask of coping was slipping, Arthur wasn’t sure.

“Because someone recently tried to kill me, so I’m hoping it’s fun. Judging by my décor I’m not in it for the money, and the hazards seem so great that if there was someone who loved me then surely I wouldn’t risk causing them pain by working in this field. So, asking as a thrifty, unloved amnesiac forger, do you and I at least sometimes have fun?”

Rotterdam. Edinburgh. Madrid: hurtling over the rooftops, the PASIV case banging against his hip, Eames still bickering with him about the correct way to make a tortilla de patatas. Apparently, the addition of onions was dependent on the softness of the type of potato. Apparently mid-scarper from being almost robbed and killed was the right time to return to the discussion.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s pronounced ‘leviO-sa’ Arthur snarked, just as the scaffolding-ironically- collapsed around them and they fell.

“ _Is_ there something between us?” Eames asked again, out of the blue.

Arthur was completely startled by the question. “I already told you…”

“I know, its just. I feel…” He watched the forger grapple for the right words. “It’s not a memory, exactly, but. It’s more like a _sensation._ ”

Arthur deliberated how to respond. It was good that Eames was remembering things, even if they remained impressionistic at best, but he wanted to steer clear of murky waters. And Arthur’s recent private concession some not insignificant part of him was just, wholesale, _drawn to_ Eames was hella murky. Arthur didn’t even understand _what_ he really wanted from Eames, let alone _why_ he might want it. He’d gone back and forth over which problem was the more urgent in neutralising, but thoughts centred around the latter got him nowhere since they probably needed a therapist to answer them, and thoughts focussed on the former quickly unravelled into speculations he wasn’t 100% proud of, in terms of professionalism. 

(Arthur had pragmatically taken himself out to a bar in London a few months ago and let himself be picked up by as close a facsimile as he could find, reasoning that maybe his body just wanted the features that composed Eames.

It did not.

It had gone and pledged its allegiance when Arthur wasn’t paying attention, so now they were at a stalemate. His feelings were refusing to comply with his reason and his body kept threatening to unleash the dimples any time Eames inadvertently did something endearing. Which- fuck, the man had four teapots and amnesia and the complete collection of well-thumbed Earthsea paperbacks on his shelf and had voluntarily taken the time to wash and iron their shared bedlinen-was far too often for Arthur to risk coming down from heart-boner DEFCON 2 even for a moment.)

“We’ve kissed” Arthur explained neutrally. “Uh, twice actually. It was necessary. For a job. Jobs” he corrected. “I think you’re just…recalling that somehow.”

Eames tilted his head incredulously, reviewing this admission.

“That seems…implausible. Not the psychology, the kissing.”

Arthur squashed his umbrage at what felt like, but obviously wasn’t intended as, a judgment that Eames would never kiss him. Even though he knew he wouldn’t ever kiss him. “I know. But at the time it was the best course of action, under the circumstances.”

The forger did not seem convinced. “You ‘professionally’ kissing me was the best course of action under the circumstances?”

Arthur really wished he hadn’t repeated it. Hearing it out loud just made it even more dubious.

“It was you who, uh…they were both your idea. Sort of.”

“I have follow-up questions.”

“Please don’t ask them.”

That got him a distracted smile, but Eames was clearly already moving on in his ruminations.

“It’s killing me not remembering stuff” he finally sighed. “It makes me feel…disorientated all the time.”

Arthur nodded sympathetically. “Yusuf says it’s partly down to the drugs he’s been giving you. It helps tamp down the paranoia you initially exhibited, but the side-effect is it amplifies your memory-loss.”

“I’d rather have my memories back.”

“I’d rather you not garotte me in my sleep. Sorry buddy.”

Eames sighed again and scratched at his stubble mindlessly. “What if I never get my memories back? What if this is me forever: scrambled egg for brains. There’s no way Hobb will let me work dreamshare half out of my mind.”

Arthur didn’t have the heart to correct him. Instead he went for reassurance. “Listen, from what I can tell, Yusuf knows his shit. He already stopped you dying, right? So…let's both put our faith in him coming through on his promise to restore you to your usual, incredibly smug pain in the ass self, yeah?” He tacked on a bright smile which he prayed Eames couldn’t see through. He couldn’t even contemplate the alternative.

Eames, however, didn’t seem to be listening. Wherever his introspection had taken him, its conclusion manifested itself in him pushing away from the countertop and moving slowly towards Arthur. With intent. If Arthur had to categorise it, he would go for _ominous._

Could something be attractively ominous?

Was there something wrong with Arthur for even thinking that?

Yes. Surely yes there was. So many things wrong.

Eames arrived at Arthur’s personal space and Arthur felt himself scrutinised, methodically _checked out_. He was acutely aware of wearing a third-day-in-a-row t-shirt and probably sporting a hot flush. He subtly edged back, but there wasn’t really anywhere for him to go in the small laundry room.

“What are you doing?” he managed, raising his hands pre-emptively in defence.

“Sense memory.”

“What?”

Eames narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “I think you should let me kiss you.”

“Uhm.”

“If I’ve done it twice before then there’s a good chance it’ll jog my memory. Like jumpstarting a car battery.”

Arthur pursed his lips tightly closed, because there was no way in Hell he was letting that happen. Having sealed his mouth he realised he couldn’t verbalise this so had to make do with a sharp shake of his head. Eames frowned then cocked an eyebrow.

“It’s three seconds of your life. Come on.” A warm hand settled on his bare forearm.

Arthur’s gaze gravitated to that hand and refused to shift. Eames’ knuckles were still scratched up. He wasn’t wearing a watch. Arthur had Eames’ great-grandfather’s watch in his bedside drawer. The note _did_ contain a lie and Arthur knew it.

It had felt so good. That first morning.

Eames’ hand on him. _So good._

“It’s just the drugs” he got out, his voice sounding traitorously small. “The chemicals are messing with your hormones.”

“You said they were messing with my memory.”

“I’m not a chemist, Eames” Arthur weakly snapped back. Eames moved his hand away, but a moment later it settled on Arthur in the form of his thumb curving gently over his brow.

“Your t-shirt is a disaster” he murmured. “Also, I need to try something.” He tilted his head so that his mouth ghosted perilously over Arthur’s. “Let me, please. Please.”

When Arthur desperately reached for “You don’t like me like that. Believe me” he got a puzzled look in reply, as if what he had just announced had nothing to do with what was about to happen.

Which, of course, it didn’t.

Arthur blinked, opened his mouth to continue and got Eames’ lips brushing delicately against his own for his trouble. He let Eames curiously kiss him whilst he closed his eyes and took the world’s fastest introduction to Ethics course: graduated with honours.

He didn’t freeze up like in Rotterdam but neither did he lose control like in Edinburgh. No. This was a measured response: kindly and chaste but not reciprocating in any way, certain not to let Eames misconstrue anything about the situation.

Totally manageable.

Okay, there were now fingers nestling into his hair, but he was a point man, best in the business: managing situations was what he did. As long as Eames didn’t…

“Arthur…”

At the sound of Eames breathing out his name like that Arthur yanked his mouth away. “I can prove it” he barked out frantically.

Eames leaned back into view. “What?”

Arthur took a deep breath. He really really didn’t want to confess this to Eames, but he could see no other way. He’d rather live with the mild humiliation and probably slight ruining of their working relationship forever than endure the quandary of another moment with Eames’ mouth. “You told me. In Pasadena. You were very clear. You said, uhm, “It’s never going to happen. Walk away.””

Eames looked at him quizzically. “Why did I feel the need to say that?”

Arthur didn’t reply. He watched, his heart sinking, as Eames worked out what kind of scenario must’ve led up to those words being uttered, and couldn’t stop himself from interrupting any further ones.

“I was, uh, drunk” he explained. “And I…sort of…” he winced. “It was obviously a mistake, because normally I don’t even…” he let out a long rueful breath and shrugged, hoping to imply the end of the matter. “Anyway…so…”

Eames didn’t say anything for a long while. Arthur had worked with him enough times to know a thinking Eames was a dangerous Eames. For as much as he extolled the virtues of inspiration and reacting to situations on instinct, when Eames _deliberated_ with the full force of that mind the results were brutal. Arthur had heard the forger, at the drop of a hat, hold well-informed conversations about the Buddhist concept of inaction, incredulity surrounding metanarratives in postmodern works of literature, the two-tiered structure of Rawlsian theories of justice, and the differences between the architectural philosophies of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright- the marks never once questioned his acumen. There was a reason MI6 had wanted Eames- or whatever his real name was- in their stable. There was a reason Cobb requested Arthur offer him work so often.

“It seems clear to me, having been around you for the last few days, that unlike me you don’t really see much value in curiosity” Eames began.

Arthur swallowed.

“And that being in the army you’ve probably had ample opportunity to…try your hand at things.” He left the euphemism untranslated.

Arthur felt the need to try to divert wherever this was going, but instead he heard himself say “how do you know I was in the army?”

“A man who prioritises cleaning his gun over eating breakfast has a pretty transparent c.v. You weren’t working in The Gap after graduating, Arthur. So…not turning up on my doorstep in Pasadena fuelled by Dutch courage and ‘straight boy’ curiosity, but some other reason. Which I was not persuaded by. Is that right?”

Oh fuck. He’d tried to avoid the murky waters and the fucking murky waters had found him, nonetheless.

“It was a hotel, not your doorstep. Our friend had just died. I was sad and you were….” Jesus, what the fuck was the end of _that_ thought? “You stole my car.”

Eames moved close again, this time looking so gently and carefully at Arthur it was somehow a million times worse than when he was just being checked out. Eames didn’t say anything else. Instead he tugged at the hemline of Arthur’s t-shirt.

“In the name of all that is holy please let me wash this.”

In a daze Arthur must have nodded, because the next thing he was aware of was Eames’ infuriating hands skimming under the fabric and up his sides, rucking the stained t-shirt up and all the way over his arms and suddenly off him entirely. Arthur watched it drop into a puddle of white on the floor. The forger then gave him an inscrutable look he just didn’t have enough blood reaching his brain to unpack, before leaning in and enthusiastically reuniting his mouth with Arthur’s neck. As stubble grazed against his skin Arthur remembered vividly the smell of Eames’ aftershave in the dark of a Rotterdam alleyway, the taste of the sweet waffles he'd shared with Mal just before. He tilted his head back and heard the sound of his own surrender, helpless and happy.

It was glorious and inevitable and the biggest mistake of Arthur’s life and he knew there was nothing that was going to stop it from continuing.

“Oh shit. Sorry guys. I didn’t know you were…uhm…Eames, it's time for your final dose of antidote.” Yusuf’s flustered apology snapped Arthur out of it like a shot to the head in a dream. In the moment it took him to shake himself back into reality Eames had stepped away and was ruefully running his hand over his mouth, blinking and not looking at anyone in particular.

“Don’t worry about it, mate, I was just trying to jog my memory” he announced, heading towards the doorway. Arthur stayed where he was, a bundle of warring sensations. He had the horrible feeling he was smiling dopily at the retreating figure but the next realisation-that he was shirtless- cleared his head with a humiliating jolt.

“It’s not what it looks like” he explained, though what the fuck it looked like and what the fuck it was Arthur had no fucking clue.

Yusuf scowled lightly and waved a hand at Arthur's neck. “Let me be the first to point out to you and your hickeys how ironic it is that you have forgotten he has amnesia.”

“I haven’t…”

“Consent is always front and centre, Arthur.”

“We weren’t…he was just trying to jumpstart his…”

Yusuf raised his hands. “For god’s sake, I so don’t want to know what part of Eames he was trying to jumpstart. He has a bathroom with a lock on the door for that.”

Arthur groaned. “No. I…”

Eames returned momentarily, lifted a clean, familiar, faded t-shirt off the laundry pile and tossed it to Arthur. “Borrow this one” he chirped, then disappeared again. Arthur caught the item of clothing and smiled at it idiotically.

“Oh for goodness sake” Yusuf said. “I knew it!”

Arthur slipped on the new top and a zip up hoodie that was lying around by the detergents. Then he scooped his abandoned t-shirt off the floor and put it in the washing machine. He gave it a friendly pat and restarted the cycle. 

Yusuf didn't know anything. There was nothing to know. Knowledge was stupid. Arthur had been wrong: he fucking loved working with Eames.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Camelot

The thing with The Forger’s Rule of Thumb (‘anything incongruous is probably going to get you killed’) was that since the forger’s thumbs tended to, by definition, change, the rule had a tendency to be wrong and kick said forger in the proverbial balls from time to time.

Case in point:

Merlin woke up to the sound of a body colliding with the wall in the next room. The Hedda Sterne original that hung above the dresser shook slightly with the impact. He rolled to the edge of the bed and reached under the frame, feeling on the underside for his concealed gun.

It wasn’t there. 

For a moment he checked himself, checked it was the correct side of the bed, but everything was as it always was, except that the holster was empty.

And also, which gallery was the forgery in? Why couldn’t he remember?

Someone yelled and there was a crash of furniture breaking.

Fuck. He had intruders. The sudden crack of gunshot forced him to add an adjective: armed intruders.

He clambered quickly out the bedroom window, sidled along the weather-beaten ledge and dropped quietly into a crouch on the balcony that led into the kitchen area, occupied by three men- two of them struggling against each other, one looking on for a chance to intercede. He had absolutely no idea who any of them were.

He decided to go with the policy of ‘incapacitate everyone, do the introductions later’ just to be on the safe side.

Because he never usually locked these shutters it was easy to time his grab, yank the idle man through them and let momentum take him clean off the balcony to the pile of rubbish below. Not dead, but out of the picture.

One down (quite literally.)

Some unknown number to go.

When he turned his attention back to the kitchen the two other strangers had already careened into the adjoining room, meaning he could enter the kitchen unnoticed. He paused at the cutlery drawer and considered pulling out the knife that no right-minded professional criminal would dream of using to cut food, but in the end left it where it was. If he wasn’t certain who was friend or foe then fists would have to be enough.

In the front room a beautiful Kenyan woman was cowering behind the sofa accompanied by a fellow local man. Even though his disorientation (why couldn’t he remember yesterday? Why didn’t he recognise any of these people?) was exasperating his jitters Merlin cobbled together some assumptions, statistics and hunches and decided that the chances of him knowing the local woman was most likely (perhaps she was his girlfriend?) This was when he decided to swiftly apply The Forger’s Rule Of Thumb about incongruous things that stand out.

The Indian by the bookcase in a cardigan waving the Beretta at the sofa stood out.

Merlin pounced into the fray, grabbing and disarming him in one fluid movement.

“Eames!” the guy got out, before Merlin slammed him into the kitchen doorframe and watched him crumple to the floor.

He glanced at the open door of the flat where he could hear more fighting going on down the corridor, and where presumably this Eames accomplice was. Okay, so two down, one more to go. He waggled his eyebrows reassuringly at the beautiful woman peeping over the sofa. She tried to shoot him in the face.

So, yes, rules of thumb.

Part of the bookcase splintered above him as he flung himself into the shallow cover it provided.

And no, not his girlfriend, then.

He grabbed a hefty hardback copy of Moby Dick off one of the shelves and lobbed it over the sofa, timing his return shot to the moment when the Kenyans would’ve had to batter it away. Unlike the former owner of this gun, Merlin had no qualms about shooting a spread of three bullets straight through the upholstery, with some success: only the woman made a dash for the exit, and she was extremely fortunate the Beretta's clip was now empty. He threw away the gun, rolled across the room and ended up by his wounded victim as blood spluttered out of an imminently fatal chest wound.

“Gun?” Merlin demanded.

He nodded his head in the direction of Merlin’s abandoned weapon.

“That was yours?” Maybe he needed to reconsider his assessment of what was going on here. If the guy in the kitchen doorway hadn’t had his own gun he probably wasn’t an intruder, in which case Merlin had possibly knocked out the wrong person and was a pretty terrible house guest. He really really wished he could remember if he was an Airbnb host and prayed the answer was no, as this was likely to get him left a very bad review.

“Who do you work for?!”

The man raised a weak, bloodied hand at the front door. “Günter wanted to finish the job.”

“What’s the job?”

He grinned, on the verge of slipping away “You.”

Merlin needed to know more but at that moment a slim figure (Eames? Günter? Bollocks, he needed _more_ facts) burst through the flat doorway, armed with a Glock. Out of sight behind the sofa, Merlin took a moment to get a measure of him from what he did next.

The stranger raised his weapon in the direction of the kitchen doorway, where Merlin’s victim-slash-house guest was coming round, so that sort of answered at least one pressing question. Merlin assessed the way Eames/ Günter held himself, the way he moved: focussed and efficient, deadly. Like he’d just murdered Merlin’s forgotten other house guest out in the corridor just now.

He’d bet his entire gambling winnings (oh, well at least he remembered he was a gambler) that this man was military. The black framed glasses were probably part of a disguise to make him look harmless out on the streets of the capital, but the oversized hoody was a dead giveaway- perfect to conceal weapons in, but not flattering on the guy at all.

Not that he really needed help in that department.

Bloody hell but he was pretty, all pale hands and ruthless frown and about-to-be-fired Glock.

Pretty evil, obviously.

If Merlin was going to be forced to choose between siding with a professional assassin and a helpless possible house guest of his, currently fumbling for his phone and crawling into the kitchen, he was always going to pick the underdog. Merlin liked underdogs. And dogs. And especially what you might consider an underdog dog: like a mongrel, or better yet a runt of a mongrel, from a pound, maybe old and missing a leg. Maybe he should get a dog. It could be a guard dog. Then he would perhaps wake up to less situations akin to this.

Dog adoption later, pretty, evil, hitman first.

He _looked_ like a Günter alright. Also, the ghost of a memory of a place, or an anecdote about the place, _Dresden,_ floated into his awareness, accompanied by feelings of frustration.

Günter was lining up to fire a shot when Merlin launched himself from his cover and full body-tackled him to the ground, even as the bullet whistled free. They landed with a thud by the low table, which Merlin careened the assailant’s head into for good measure. The left lens of the glasses smashed with a satisfying crunch. Unfortunately he didn’t get any time to enjoy it as a retaliatory elbow slammed into his shoulder, throwing him off balance so he couldn’t pin the guy down.

Yep. Military for sure.

“Dick…eh!” the guy barked out, before Merlin prudently punched him in the throat. He clambered on top of him and manhandled the flaying arms into neutralised positions under his own knees.

“Viel Glück calling for help with a laryngeal fracture, pet” he smirked.

*

Yusuf was still having quite the week.

He crawled further into the kitchen, over the body of the intruder Arthur had just very much shot and killed moments before. Where Carliana was though he had no idea. Maybe she’d fled when the hit had gone sideways. Presumably Arthur had also taken Günter out in the hallway, which was a relief. Now there was only one assailant left. The side of his head throbbed where it had been slammed into a doorway and his nose was leaking blood, either from the same unfortunate rendezvous or from the extreme stress of it being Eames who’d been the matchmaker and was said final assailant.

He’d _told_ Arthur it would get worse before it got better.

When he reached the work surface he took a moment to check his phone, but there was no reply to the frantic text he’d punched out a minute ago. Instead he hauled himself up, took a moment to blink back the dizziness of being upright again, and opened the door to the cupboard with all the teapots.

Dickens. God he hoped they weren’t Arthur’s last words. If they were Eames was going to feel really bad about that once he got his memory back.

He extracted the ugly teapot and gave it a cautious shake.

Fuck, if it had come to this they were in trouble.

*

Arthur had just about managed to squeeze his eyelid shut as the left lens of his glasses shattered, a fragment of glass slicing meanly just underneath his eyebrow and embedding itself there. It immediately began to sting like the world’s worst papercut. The only good thing about the searing pain was it drew his attention away from the crushing sensation his ribs were trying to tell him about, caused by Eames’ bulk. And the panic that everything had well and truly gone to shit.

He tried to focus on something else. A happy memory.

He ended up noting that interestingly, this wasn’t the first time Eames had punched him.

That had been Oslo: their very first job together. Or, at least, they were both involved in the same job, except Arthur had been drugged, snatched, put under and tricked into giving up the location of his ops team’s brand new PASIV equipment to MI6.

By Eames.

Who’d also- the absolute fucker- kissed him then as well.

Really, Arthur was coming round to the idea that Eames being the death of him did make some sort of karmic sense.

*

“I am not the dick” Merlin explained to the man wriggling underneath him. “Since you broke into my flat and tried to murder me clearly you are the dick here.”

All he got was a wheezy choking noise in reply, which was understandable. Perhaps an apology was too much to ask for given the current circumstances.

“I would ask you to explain yourself, but it would be a very one-sided conversation, and I hate those. I’m a people person, you see. I like the back and forth, a bit of banter, perhaps….” here he waved a hand at the man’s form “if they look like you, a little flirtation, if both parties are interested. But you’ve squandered our chances for that by bringing a Glock to my flat instead of one of the more acceptable housewarming gifts: wine, chocolates, a peace lily, in Victorian times it was a pineapple. Of course back then the word was still hyphenated, so ‘pine-apple.' What was wrong with bringing a pine-apple?"

The assassin managed what seemed like a vexed grunt and had the audacity to roll his eyes. Well, eye singular. Merlin couldn’t see the one behind the spider’s web of broken glass.

Merlin didn’t get the opportunity to respond because a teapot smashed into the back of his head. He toppled forward, practically headbutting Günter, who- surprisingly considering his lean frame- took the opening to work enough sudden leverage and roll Merlin off him. Stunned and in pain, Merlin grabbed him by the back of the hoody before he could crawl over to the gun, just out of reach and hauled him back. He dropped over the man and got his hand on the weapon first. The lobber of the teapot (his houseguest?! Wait, so whose side was he on then?) just about managed to nip out of sight before Merlin’s shot found him.

He twisted back to the intruder under him and began to yank him over onto his back so he could curse at his evil pretty face.

“For fuck’s sake, Günter, that was your entire plan? Get him to throw a teapot at me? I don’t even like Dickens. Barnaby Drudge! I fell asleep trying to read that book. Asleep!”

For some reason the dick was grinning at him. In itself that was unsettling, since Merlin was clearly the victor in this situation and Günter was likely to find himself face down in Mombasa harbour very soon. The blood-stained teeth and leaking gash under the eyebrow just added to the perversity.

Merlin nodded at his victim’s fist, clamped around something, and raised an eyebrow. “Really?! You’re putting your faith in attacking me with a shard of pottery?”

Günter shrugged and squeezed his hand. Merlin caught a whiff of a familiar sweet smell suddenly filling the air.

Halothane vapour.

He stared at the now open palm of the stranger between his knees. It held a burst capsule.

“Shit.”

The grin got bigger, smugger.

“But you’ll also…”

Merlin felt himself begin to slip into unconsciousness. He rocked back on his knees unsteadily, gazing at the man’s chest, the ill-fitting hoody having worked itself undone during the struggles, revealing a very familiar t-shirt.

“One more thing” he said, his tongue thick in his mouth, his eyelids drooping. “That’s mine.”

And even though he'd deftly cut off Günter's ability to speak, the dick apparently had other ways to communicate, namely sign language, because Merlin could’ve sworn the last thing he saw before they both passed out was him tapping his five spread out fingers across Detective Columbo. Bewilderingly, that was the sign for 'darling.'


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mombasa, part 4

Eames woke up and Arthur wasn’t lying next to him. Instead, Cobb of all people was snoozing in an armchair by his bed. He took a moment to wince at the Halothane-induced headache leaching across his face (so face-ache really) then coughed politely until the extractor stirred, startled into an alert position, and lifted his gun out of his lap so it faced forward.

“This is why Arthur does all the heavy lifting” Eames said groggily, “You’re a terrible guard.”

“And good morning to you, too, Ea…. Actually…just to be certain…what’s your name?”

Eames hauled himself up in the bed, his muscles wholesale protesting. “If you expect me to answer that truthfully then we have bigger problems, Dom.”

Cobb nodded, then narrowed his eyes, as if he’d suddenly heard Arthur’s internal voice chiding him for trusting so quickly. “Nevertheless, I’m going to need a bit more evidence you’re back to normal before I…”

“When you and Mal first started hooking up you found her French accent a little _too_ erotic, so she used to pretend to be American whilst you were shagging so you’d last longer.”

Cobb turned an uncomfortable shade of red, gawped, looked away, tried to deny it then closed his mouth again. “Holy fuck I can’t _believe_ she told you that.”

Eames gave Cobb a placatory smile. “Yeah, she was the worst.”

The other man relaxed, then nodded. “The worst” he replied.

Eames swung his heavy legs out of bed and instantly regretted it. “How come you’re here?”

“Business, actually. We took the Cobol job. The initial meeting was scheduled for last week, but Arthur postponed out of the blue. Apparently, this shitshow is the reason why.”

“Ah, so that’s why he was in Addis Ababa. He always did start jobs a week earlier than everyone else.”

“Actually I thought he’d just come to see you, for some…” Cobb trailed off in a way that suggested he regretted starting the sentence. Eames almost missed it due his head/ face hurting. Almost.

“Some what?”

“Doesn’t matter. You know” Cobb said awkwardly.

Eames did not know, and suspected that it _did_ matter, but he prioritised physical pain over epistemological and decided not to follow up. He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, gathering himself then asked, neutrally, “Where is he, anyway?”

Cobb holstered his weapon and folded his arms, in a gesture that was probably supposed to be mock-judgmental but didn’t quite land. “Well, he _was_ in the Diani Hospital getting his larynx looked at by an ENT friend of a friend of that guy who was here when I arrived…Ashura?”

“Ah. He works with the chemist I was on the job with. He’s like a... gatekeeper, for when they’re putting punters under. Sort of a side-hustle I think. Was he old, and kind of…mystical?”

Cobb chuckled. “Yeah. He dosed you up good and proper, on top of the Halothane, so you were out for the count when I arrived. He said something about being a man dreaming he is a moth dreaming he is a man. I don’t know Eames, bit over my head, if you know what I mean. I just got off a 12 hour flight and a series of weirdly truncated texts from my point man, I’m not really the best guy to chat philosophy with.”

“Truncated?”

“In that Arthur failed to initially mention you nearly killed him and there were three dead bodies keeping him company as he typed.”

Eames shrugged. “He’s the best at what he does, but the worst at what he texts.” He shuffled over to the wardrobe and eased himself into a fisherman’s sweater, swapping his pyjamas for some dark slacks and changing his socks for fresh ones. “And how is he?” he asked.

“I don’t know. He hasn’t got back yet. And…well, obviously as we’ve just recapped, he’s a bad texter. Would it kill him to let me know he’s alright?” He suddenly blanched at his faux pas. “Sorry, poor choice of words.”

Eames took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Well, at least they were both still alive- that was something. He gazed at the Hedda Sterne landscape painting, willing it to impart some of its peacefulness into his life. Wasn’t that what art was supposed to do? Well, landscape pictures at least. He wasn’t so sure about the ones that were just majestic cows. Maybe they bought their own sort of peace. Maybe he should take some time off and forge a cow painting, just to find out.

“Actually” Cobb said, “As much as I’m here to chastise you about trying to kill Arthur, I’m also offering you a place on the Cobol job.”

Eames stretched until he felt his back crack, then winced and put a hand on the wardrobe to steady himself. Cobb got out of the chair and loaned him an arm so he could hobble into the front room and the fallout of his life. “If it involves running, walking briskly, walking at a normal pace or moving my head much I’ll have to pass, mate.”

*

Arthur was not at the clinic, in turned out, but instead asleep on the couch, his injured face turned to the back of the sofa, his brown leather jacket slung over his body. Cobb and Eames paused in the doorway, not wanting to disturb him. On the coffee table were his glasses (still broken) and a bottle of painkillers. Eames would put good money on the Glock being under the cushion nestling his head. He could make out neat white gauze above his eye where the glass had sliced deep.

“Oh” Cobb whispered. “I guess he got back whilst I was…”

“Asleep/”

“/On guard duty.”

Eames tutted and moved quietly past the sofa towards the kitchen. He was reasonably surprised he made it without the point man waking up, and took a moment to imagine scalding him for such poor spidey-senses, but then, Arthur was kind of a heavy sleeper when he was totally worn out. On past jobs it had become apparent they subscribed to different schools of thought: Eames was a napper: frequently and occasionally frustratingly for other team members catching 40 winks here and there to refresh his batteries. Arthur, on the other hand, would plough on through whatever marathon shift of research or planning session he had vowed to himself to complete, ending up crashing later on and as a knock-on effect regularly missing either team-bonding evening drinks with the crew, or breakfast the next day. Eames had watched him glare at cups of black coffee as if they, and not his own ridiculous work ethic, were to blame for why he was going to be prickly and condescending at least until lunch.

(Salads, much to the surprise of no-one, failed to right the ship and it had fallen over time to Eames to hand Arthur some sort of local pastry mid-morning. It had become a routine of sorts, regardless of where they were: pain au chocolate, pastelitos, stroopwafels, Aberdeen butteries, Portuguese custard tarts- Eames had rustled up them all. Arthur, in his turn, had matured from initial confusion, annoyance at being mothered, and suspicion there was a quid pro quo attached, to where he was now: able to curtly nod, ignore the offering for about a minute, then relent, only occasionally whining about pastry flecks defacing his suit. Okay, yes, maybe Eames had sometimes over-reached in his mission to educate Arthur on the culinary traditions of various nations: the cock and balls doughnut from Voodoo Donuts in Portland had gone straight in the bin, which was a crime really because it had been filled with Bavarian Cream, but overall he felt like he was doing his duty keeping their point man the right side of hangry. And Eames knew that there _was_ a quid pro quo in play in Arthur’s mind because Arthur was incapable of being in debt to anyone. It was possible the only reason Arthur had saved him from Gunter’s assassination attempt was the hefty pastry debt he had built up.)

“Arthur?” Cobb said, crouching down and giving the sleeper a light shake.

Arthur did not stir, indicating he’d taken some of the painkillers on top of his own dose of halothane, which he’d probably not declared to the dispensing pharmacist. Eames couldn’t see his throat but he had no delusions about how much it probably hurt.

“Leave him be, Dom. Let’s chat in the kitchen” he said. Dom agreed and followed him in, pausing momentarily at the doorframe to raise an eyebrow and the blood smear on the lintel.

“Yours?” he asked.

“My work” Eames reluctantly replied.

“How much do you remember?”

“Some. Violence is quite…vivid, so.”

“Yeah. Ashura said there was a woman who got away?”

“Carliana. She’ll turn up. Right now all I care about is having a cup of tea and maybe pilfering a couple of Arthur’s drugs. My face hurts like buggery.”

Cobb nodded sympathetically. “Back in the old days Miles would use halothane in his dose- sometimes putting us under via the gas rather than an injection. Not the nicest of sensations. Thank God he made the switch.”

Eames stuck the kettle on and fixed them some tea, rustling up some hobnobs in an attempt to take the edge off his nausea with a little bit of ballast in his stomach. Cobb grinned when he recognised them and Eames made a mental note to hassle Arthur into allocating some of the petty cash to a supply of them on the next job. Perhaps they could redistribute the highlighter budget.

“So….” Cobb began. Eames suspected he knew where this might be going. “You and Arthur seem to be getting on better.”

Eames arched his eyebrow. “Which part of ‘I tried to kill him yesterday” did you conveniently forget?”

“I know, but it’s still an improvement, I think. Remember, _last time_ you were hurt he left you in an alleyway in Madrid.”

“I remember” Eames said bitterly.

“This time he stuck around.”

“And nearly paid the price.”

“Well yes, but before that. Better, huh?”

Eames narrowed his eyes. “Are you trying to make a point, Dom?”

Dom looked shifty. “No? Maybe? Dresden was... well, something.”

Eames decided not to poke that. “I don’t think you should. Make a point.”

“Okay, I won’t. But, just so you know, if Mal were here _she_ would. Make a point I mean.”

Eames sighed.

The thing was, Mal had already made the point. A long time ago. Pretty much within an hour of Arthur and Eames being introduced to each other.

Well, officially. They’d met before that of course, in Norway. It was just that Arthur didn’t know that.

That time, in a shared dream a much more inexperienced, still-in-the-army Arthur didn’t know he was having, Eames had forged Arthur’s squad leader, persuaded the point man to reveal the location of the American team’s PASIV and let Arthur- who thought he was finally getting his soul-mate moment with Captain Ella Ramirez- clandestinely kiss his superior commanding officer up against the wall of a very nice ski lodge. Eames, _who wasn't blind_ , devoted some of the mission to kissing him back.

It was only right and proper that Arthur, confronted with the smirking forger six months later, had tried to rip his head off and promptly initiated his blitzkrieg campaign of Eamesophobia (expiration date: unknown.) Eames suspected these years of rancour were fuelled in part by Arthur feeling humiliated by the deception and blaming himself, that somehow the truth that his superior officer would never actually want to get involved with him romantically- should have been obvious. But then again, Eames wasn’t a psychologist and to be brutally honest Arthur was as much an open book as a Norwegian Spruce was, so it was possible his speculation was way off the mark. (Although Arthur did point blank refuse to be involved in any snow-based dreams, so there was that.) 

Either way, they never talked about Oslo. It was a sort of mutually assured destruction thing, and nobody like those.

“What does hobnob even mean?” Cobb asked, in a rare moment of correctly reading the room and deciding to change topic. He risked dunking his biscuit into his tea. Eames, being British, kept dunking to a limited stable beyond the digestive: bourbons, rich teas and custard creams. He wasn’t a savage, after all.

“It means socialise with people from a slightly higher class strata than yourself.”

“And they named a cookie after that because…?”

“In Britain biscuits are part of our diplomatic arsenal. Many international incidents have been quashed by the prudent offering of a chocolate digestive. Cookies, of course, lack the civic heft.”

Cobb bit into the soggy disk and nodded. “Fair enough.”

“What he’s not telling you” a strained voice said from the doorway “Is that a hobnob is technically a _Scottish_ biscuit, so that whole British Diplomatic Service spiel is hogwash.”

Cobb sprung up off the stool and waggled his finger at Arthur. “Stop talking this instant! You’re injured.”

Arthur shrugged and took Cobb’s place at the breakfast table. He also took Cobb’s mug of tea so Eames retrieved a new cup from the cupboard.

“Putting aside that the Scottish _are_ technically British, though the Union has always been shaky, they were very capable of diplomacy” Eames replied “They had a bloody renaissance, Arthur. In fact, at a certain point in history Scotland was the most cultured country in the world. Philosophy, art, economics…”

Arthur made to reply but Cobb chastised him into silence with a glare. Instead, he flipped his black moleskin and a neat architect’s pencil: kit he usually made use of when they were on an extraction. He added something to a page then flipped it over so Eames could see. It was a stick man holding a sack of money.

Eames groaned. “Is that supposed to be Adam Smith?”

Arthur nodded gleefully. Eames shook his head. Arthur added some words to accompany his drawing, squeezing them onto the page.

_I just think saying rolled oats averted a lot of international outbreaks of war is a bit of a reach._

“James bond was Scottish and he saved the world loads of times” Eames groused.

Cobb squeezed Arthur’s shoulder.

“He’s very cheery for someone who was recently almost murdered” he said. “You’re surprisingly cheery Arthur.”

Eames sidestepped agreeing, instead waving his hand at the point man. “Drink your tea, Arthur.”

Arthur complied. Eames noted that he did look cheery. Also terrible.

Eames definitely needed him gone.

“I’ll drive you both to the airport. Cabs are extortionate. And anyway, since I tried to garotte not one but two drivers you’re probably blacklisted by association.”

He saw Arthur form an enquiry and flip open the moleskin again to share it. This time a little picture of a car appeared, followed by a giant question mark.

“Interesting use of scale. But yes, I do have a car.”

Arthur closed the notebook, satisfied.

“Sort of” Eames added.

Arthur rolled his eyes fondly.

Yep.

Gone. 

*

Once Arthur and Cobb were packed up they followed Eames out into the street and walked for a couple of blocks in the pleasant evening heat. Arthur wanted to make a snide comment about _walking_ being the exact opposite of _Eames driving_ but his voice had given out completely and it was too much hassle to try to write in his moleskine whilst keeping up with the others.

Cobb used the time to talk about the Cobol job, but he wasn’t that convincing about what role a forger would play, and Arthur got that, because if he was honest he maybe hadn’t dwelt too much on that either when he’d told Dom to recruit Eames.

“My Japanese is rusty at best” he heard Eames say.

“There’s some time to get it back” Cobb replied.

Eames glanced at Arthur but Arthur saw it coming with enough time to be distracted by the local Mombassan architecture to be able to make eye contact.

After ten minutes they arrived at a tucked-away car lot with a garage around the back. Various shoddy rust-buckets were parked out front, all missing some integral component or other. It was so obviously a front Arthur did a quick sweep to check for undercover cops loitering on the street corner.

“Rightio, here we are” Eames said, strolling purposefully towards the garage. Arthur grabbed his sleeve to halt his departure and raised a finger to indicate he wait a moment. Eames complied and Arthur fished out his notebook.

_I’m going to call a cab_

“What? Why? We’re here now. Come on.”

_These cars are so obviously hot_

_As in stolen_

Eames waved an incredulous arm around the lot of wrecks.

“I don’t think so.”

Arthur filled an entire page with an arrow and jabbed it at the garage. Eames cocked an eyebrow in query.

_Not these ones. The ones that are gonna be in there._

Eames did not deny it, but took a different tack. “What we do could hardly be classified as legal, Arthur.”

Arthur drew a heavy line under his first sentence at the top of the page, to reinforce his point, but Eames had already turned on his heel and was yelling out a greeting to a striking woman in dirty green overalls and a flat cap, of all things. He glanced at Cobb, who just shrugged lightly and followed the forger inside. Arthur had fallen afoul of Cobb’s total trust in Eames on many occasions, so he wasn’t surprised to meet such casual disregard for consequences. Eames’ charm was bespoke- not off the rack after all.

Arthur, _of all people_ , could (but never would) testify to that.

He stared at the next blank page in front of him, which was inevitably going to get filled up with more ridiculous words. 

Fucking hell.

He flicked back into the book, past the most recent comments, halves of conversations with Eames or Dom, notes on the Cobol job etc. Prior to that came some intel about Carliana and Gunter that Yusuf had come up with. And prior to that was the list he’d written Eames, strung out on a cocktail of murder-drugs and amnesia, to keep by his bed and read as soon as he woke up every morning.

Arthur refamiliarized himself with each salient point.

When he got to the one about himself he paused.

_Don’t touch Arthur’s dick_

Then, without thinking too hard about it, slowly crossed out one word.

He closed the notebook, tucked it in his jacket pocket and followed Dom into the garage.

It was fine. It was all fine. In three hours he would be on a plane back to Chicago. Twenty fours hours and a change in Egypt and Germany later and he would land, then catch a cab back to his apartment, retrieve his erstwhile cat from his neighbour, eat some soothing ice-cream with painkillers masquerading as toppings, climb into his own private unshared-with-anyone bed and fall into a deep and trauma-less sleep.

He was grateful Cobb had done all of the talking at the Cobol meet that morning- out of necessity more than choice- and the contact had been content enough to meet up in a fortnight to continue preliminary discussions, this time in Mexico, so he had a bit of time to heal, and process, and refocus his mind on what was important.

All he had to do was get through the rest of today. And on the plus side, not saying something utterly insane to Eames like _I’m no longer appalled when you kiss me please do it again_ was easy now he couldn’t speak for shit. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timbuktu, Auckland, London, Ireland

For the longest time Arthur’s step-sister had been afraid of the dark. At first he had thought this was because, being deaf, her vision was heightened, and all the shadows shifting amorphously somewhere in the black scared her. But years later when they were both grown up and it was one those rare occasions when Arthur was back in California to coincide with a family gathering she dispelled him of that misunderstanding of how senses worked, and provided a realer and sadder explanation: in the dark signing became meaningless. Her words became gestures nobody could see: the tether of human communication was severed. She was adrift.

As he lay next to Eames in the dark of the cramped trunk of Eames’ piece-of-junk car, Arthur didn’t dwell on how much Corrie would hate this, but he did think about what Eames was afraid of, ever since the Timbuktu job.

Small spaces just like this.

Back then the client had double-crossed his team and though the rest of them had managed to get out, Eames had been locked in the trunk of a truck and driven out to the desert to be murdered. It was easy to murder someone in the desert- you just drove for an hour, let them out and then drove away. In fact, that was exactly what the goons had told Eames, before slamming the trunk closed, so he had 50 miles in a hot, cramped space to imagine his futile walk back to civilisation, brought to a painful end by dehydration, sunstroke and bodily collapse.

Arthur was at that precise moment half-way across the world, having turned the job down in order to have a slightly wonky tooth straightened. This later seemed like a massive act of vanity that could have cost Eames his life and Arthur- previously non-plussed on the whole field of dentistry- noted that he became someone who suffered from low-level anxiety in the waiting room. He also noted that it was no good trying to explain to the perfectly pleasant dentist that it was less to do with the sound of small drills and cosmetic polishers and more to do with the totally irrational idea that whilst he was gurgling blue water into a shallow sink someone was probably trying to kill his forger.

Also since Timbuktu Eames had always preferred snowy dreamscapes to sand, and Arthur totally got it.

At least this particular trunk wasn’t sweltering hot, and they were still parked in the garage. Admittedly, Arthur being in there _with_ Eames did kind of contribute to the whole claustrophobia element, but that couldn’t be helped: Sammy, the woman in the overalls and flat cap, had taken one look at Carliana and the armed heavies strolling into her establishment and promptly shoved Arthur in. Eames landed heavily on him a moment later, and then there was the thunk. And now here they were.

Really, Arthur was _so done_ with Mombasa and the people in it trying to kill his colleague. He wanted to gather them altogether, point at him, tell them the Timbuktu story and indicate that his colleague was a very difficult man to kill.

He shifted slightly to give Eames a little more room. It wasn’t pitch black in the trunk, since the car was a heap of junk, so light leaked through the seams and the occasional rusted pockmarks. By it he could make out the side of Eames’ face, and that he was on his back looking up at the roof of the trunk.

 _Orientating himself towards the light, like a plant, like all living things_ Arthur thought. But listening to the way he was breathing-regulated, considered, strategic- he understood there was tamped down desperation in the act, because as much as Eames was still and composed, Arthur knew, because Arthur _knew him_ , that being in here was torture and there was only so long even someone as resilient and adaptable as Eames was could hack it before panic ate through his resolve and this whole situation went to utter shit. 

Fuck.

He tried to say Eames’ name but nothing came out.

He tried cursing instead, with the same result.

_Fuck._

Arthur couldn’t hear any voices around the car so he surmised that Sammy and Cobb had moved swiftly to greet the new visitors, putting as much distance between themselves and the quarry as possible, to diffuse suspicion. Eames’ car was way in the back of the garage so he felt pretty confident Carliana and the men with her hadn’t seen them, They just needed to wait it out. Carliana was probably just investigating any leads that might flush Eames out, and Sammy apparently was one such lead.

Arthur let himself wonder about that just for a moment. Was she someone significant in Eames’ life? She was indisputably very beautiful and, though he knew it sounded completely unromantic to raise it as a point, the truth was she was also _local_. Relationships did as a given require people to spend meaningful time with each other.

He made himself stop thinking about how the garage owner and the forger might spend time together and decided instead to think of absolutely anything else.

Like that the car smelt weird.

Eames must have heard him sniff because his quiet voice pierced the silence.

“Marzipan. That’s what you can smell.”

Arthur briefly considered Yusuf filling his car with cakes but then realised that the almond smell was much more likely to be cyanide. He jerked up instinctively but a heavy limb mum-armed him back down.

“Calm down. Lots of things besides cyanide smell like almonds.”

Arthur forced his body to relax and Eames removed his arm.

“Although knowing Yusuf, they’re all likely to be bad for you.”

Arthur risked a quiet groan. It felt like he’d tried to swallow a bit of breezeblock.

He wanted to ask if Eames was alright. He wanted to _tell_ Eames that they were going to be alright, that Dom would make Carliana and her men go away, that any minute now they be out in the dirty, illegal spacious garage again. But he couldn’t do either of those things because his voice didn’t work. 

Years ago- before he was a point man in the dreamshare community, before he was in the army, before he was drifting through college- there, but not really there and unable to put his finger on why, but knowing now it was because he hadn’t yet found his people- before all that, when he was just some distressed girl’s older brother, and there had been a power failure one night and the whole house had been plunged into darkness, he’d reached out his hand.

He wanted to do that now, but. But it was Eames.

Eames who had peeled him out of his t-shirt and pressed him up against a rickety German washing machine.

Eames who had been variously not personally interested in Arthur _and_ professionally interested in kissing Arthur for many years and in different parts of the world by now. Whether what happened in the laundry room was of the personal or professional kind Arthur had absolutely no clue, but somehow the decision to hold his hand or not hold his hand had become impossibly significant in terms of his own sense of self, of what _he_ wanted, of what _he_ might be willing to let himself become.

A small part of him lamented that he’d come to this realisation in a dark, cyanide-smelling trunk of a piece of shit car Eames had won in a bet rather than somewhere more romantic and inspiring, like Paris.

*

“Stop holding my hand.”

“I’m not holding your hand.”

“Eames! What do you call this then?!” Arthur snapped, yanking their conjoined hands in the air like the world’s worst giddy couple on a beautiful hillside in Spring. It wasn’t Spring and they weren’t on a hillside, it was Fall and they were in London, so it was technically _autumn_ but since Arthur hadn’t seen anything with leaves in the last half an hour he was willing to shunt that label back into the ‘unverified’ category. What he had seen was a pair of men with guns in their belts approaching, which seemed like a very good reason for him to be able to have access to his own gun- an outcome that required nobody to be holding his hand.

“You’re holding _my_ hand” Eames clarified. “Because I am want to wander off.”

“God I wish that were true” Arthur muttered.

“I get easily distracted and don’t understand that traffic can be dangerous” Eames continued, quickly doing something to his hair so that it now fell forward awkwardly across his brow. “We’ve been working on it back at the centre, but it’s always a bit of a risk when we are out and about. I especially like postboxes. I like to give them hugs. They are just the right circumference for hugging. You taught be the word ‘circumference.’ I am very lucky to have you as my friend.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes. “I’m not technically your friend, am I?”

Eames shook his head. It was an exaggerated gesture. Arthur clicked where this was going. His gait subtly morphed into something looser, more childish.

“You are Arthur. You look after me. You are not as easy to hug as a postbox. I know because I have tried.”

Arthur huffed and corralled Eames back to his side, perhaps more roughly than an actual professional caring for a vulnerable adult might do. “Just so you know, you impersonating a disabled person is very wrong, Eames. And I say that as someone who regularly violate people’s minds.”

“On the naughty list again” Eames chirped loudly, just as the armed men swivelled their attention towards them.

Arthur took a deep breath and plastered a smile on his face. Eames found the one leaf that London had not mushed to grey paste and promptly bent down to pick it up.

“Mustn’t leave the leaf, Arthur. The tree might want it back.”

Arthur stood still as the men drifted past and Eames slid the leaf into his shirt pocket, patting him right over the heart. He once again pondered what to have carved on Eames’ tombstone, when the time came. _‘Here lies Mr Eames: liar, thief, desecrator of Arthur’s shirts’_ continued to be a frontrunner.

*

“I think I might need you to distract me” Eames murmured reluctantly, drawing Arthur back from his memories of the penultimate time he was in London. (He most definitely did not think about the _last_ time he was in London, because that involved an awkward night at a random guy’s flat implementing his ‘great’ plan to manage the Eames Situation, and he really hoped the man had forgotten all about the weird American who had in the midst of proficiently jerking him off awkwardly asked the guy to call him ‘darling’ and _Jesus_ Arthur _was_ thinking about it and he was still _just_ as mortified now, over a year later, lying in a car trunk in Kenya, as he was three seconds after the words had come out of his mouth. He may be the best point man in the business, but he was also a total fucking human disaster and boy did he know it.)

“I've been working on it, with a therapist, but, uh, well, uhm, god Arthur It’s a shame you can’t talk” Eames whispered “because I could really do with one of your long-winded, boring, procedural monologues right about now to take my mind off this. You know the kind of thing: _“all team members will stay separately at the following designated hotels, equidistant from the main base of operations. The quickest exit route from each hotel is as follows/if the main base of operations is compromised the following seventeen contingencies will activate_ / _today’s PASIV transport schedule and decoy PASIV transport schedule is as follows…”_

Arthur wanted to interrupt by pointing out that Eames had almost immediately violated all the precautions about staying in separate hotels Arthur put in place, and now most of the time he chose his own hotel and then texted Arthur the information. Occasionally he stayed in exactly the same hotel as Arthur and seemed to take great pleasure in completely ignoring him in the hotel bar or somehow managing to time his appearance at the closing elevator doors perfectly, so that the two of them rode up together. Arthur always remained silent for these short journeys, refusing to abandon what he thought was the very sensible precaution of them pretending not to know each other whilst on a job. Occasionally he successfully tricked himself into believing he didn’t know the man smirking at him in the reflected glass at all, and those days were the best.

One time when they were on a job in Auckland Eames had followed him out of the elevator and all the way to his bedroom door, swerving off at the last possible moment to arrive at his own adjacent room. How he had known Arthur’s room number was a question not worth pondering, since that way, like most ways involving Eames, led to madness.

Arthur couldn’t interrupt though, and he couldn’t provide the distracting speech, because he didn’t have any words at his disposal. He thought about fishing out his phone and typing, but the light and the sound were a risk. The last thing he wanted was to draw the heavies over to their hiding place.

“Or a song” Eames continued quietly. Arthur could see him clenching and unclenching his fists, the lightness so obviously forced. “It’s a shame you’ve lost your voice because I have to say, your drunken rendition of Good King Wenceslas, whilst not perhaps as canon as say, the Kings College choir version, is to my mind, wholly distracting and would do wonders for my freaking out, panic attack incoming brain right now.”

_Fuck_

That had been rural Ireland one Christmas at the end of a job. There had been a lot of Guinness, followed by Bushmills whisky, followed by ill-advised absinthe, Mal laughing at Dom who had fallen in a bog whilst out trying to gather ‘winter fuel’ for the fire, then falling in herself, and Arthur having to pull them both out with his expensive cashmere scarf because Eames had just gotten yet another horrific tattoo and claimed his arm hurt too much.

So much had changed since then. Mal was gone. Dom was broken. Eames was half a dozen stilted breaths away from a full-scale break down. And Arthur was unable to get them out of the trunk, unable to undo the trauma of Timbuktu, unable to speak.

He needed to distract Eames. He needed to get his mind off the cramped space and the murderers and the fact that everything was fucked.

He edged closer to the forger, pulled himself up so his weight was all on his side and the back of his head was resting against the roof of the trunk.

“What are you doing?” Eames began, before Arthur cupped his face and cut him off. Just because his voice didn’t work, didn’t mean his mouth was broken.

And the thing was, Arthur had _always_ found Eames kissing him entirely distracting. So there was that.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mombasa, part 5

In one way it was hard to quantify what that kiss cost Arthur. In another way it really wasn’t. It cost him $25,000.

*

About three seconds after Eames realised what was happening, his hands instinctively shoved at Arthur’s shoulders, propelling him hard into the boot roof. The ominous thud would've drowned out Arthur’s shocked yelp had he made a sound as his head collided with metal. Eames froze, with Arthur still half draped over him, eyes wide with shock- because there was every chance Carliana and her goons had heard that. Moments later his fears were confirmed by the sound filtered through the car’s thin walls of heavy boots fast approaching. Arthur must’ve also been aware of this, but he was choosing not to do anything except glare angrily down at Eames.

“I was already having a panic attack” Eames shot back. “Why the bloody hell would you do something guaranteed to make me panic even more?!”

He saw Arthur open his mouth to reply, remember he’d lost his voice, do something with his face that indicated he was recalling just _how and why and whose fault it was_ he’d lost his voice, then snap it shut again. In the low light of the boot Arthur’s brown eyes were black and furious. Eames filed it away as probably the least romantic eye contact he’d ever experienced in his life. He wasn’t entirely surprised that Arthur was the cause. Privately, Arthur was in a lot of Eames’ Top 10 ‘least’ lists.

“Arthur!” he tried again, trying to snap the point man out of his personal annoyance and into a more proactive ‘we’re about to get killed’ stance.

“The laundry room” Arthur wheezed, the words all bruised and shaky and clearly causing him actual physical pain to say.

“What about the laundry room?” Eames asked, cocking his head in confusion.

Arthur stared at him inscrutably for a moment more, then at the last possible moment, just as the boot lock popped open and daylight sliced into their hiding place, Eames felt his hand slide into his jacket and retrieve his gun. Then Arthur was rolling smoothly off him and firing at the assailant who had been dumb enough to present himself as a target to an irate, spurned point man.

What happened after that was a sudden blur of loud noises and light, and Eames- triply blindsided by the residual effects of the drugs in his system, the claustrophobia and Arthur kissing him out of the blue- could only lie still and blink stupidly as it unfolded around him. The guy that had had the unfortunate idea to open the boot managed to avoid Arthur’s bullet, only to realise a moment later that Arthur wasn’t aiming for him anyway, but instead for the large barrels of petrol stacked up behind him. The ensuing explosion was deafening, followed almost instantly by a wave of heat as the column of fire burst into existence. Its sheer presence blew the shocked assailant helplessly against the vehicle, whereupon Arthur leaned up, grabbed the guy by the throat and smashed him viciously headfirst into the back of the car. In the same fluid movement he dropped the body, reached up and yanked the boot lid shut so once again he and Eames were sealed in the space together- except this time a gust of fire licked over the entire vehicle and everything got incredibly hot and terrifying in ways almost exactly not like the hot and terrifying way that was Arthur kissing him moments before.

“Holy mother of…” was as far as Eames got before a second, louder explosion, followed the first. Arthur’s body was up against his and his hair was basically in Eames mouth and his arm was bracketing him against the corner of the boot furthest away from the fire, in a gesture both weirdly protective and futile. It was possible, Eames acknowledged dimly, that he was about to die in here. With Arthur.

Which was sort of unsurprising but also unwanted.

“You alright?!” he yelled, moving his head back so he could at least make out Arthur’s face. “What the fuck was that?”

Arthur, ever resourceful, even in the most trying of times, had somehow retrieved his moleskin from somewhere, opened it to a relevant page and was now holding it up, a little too close for Eames to comfortably focus on, but there was enough low light so he could make out the drawing nonetheless: it was Arthur’s drawing of a car with a giant question mark from earlier that morning.

“Yes” Eames nodded. “I think you’re right. A car just exploded. Shit. Sammy’s going to be pissed off.”

Arthur rolled his eyes and jerked his head around to mean that they had more pressing things to worry about, like still being trapped. And Carliana and the two remaining thugs. And the fireball. He felt the moleskin drop lightly onto his chest and Arthur start to wriggle himself around so he could once again reach the latch.

“Careful. It might be hot” Eames said, too late, just as Arthur found that out the hard way. Since he couldn’t audibly curse Arthur banged an angry fist against the roof, which was also hot.

“Easy…” Eames said, soothing. “Actually this might work out well for us. The fire will have chased Carliana and co out of the garage, so really our only problem is that…well...”

Arthur twisted his head round to glare at him again.

“That everything is on fire. Still. One problem is better that two.”

Arthur didn’t get the opportunity to reply even if he could, because all of a sudden the car lurched forward and started moving. The momentum toppled Arthur back against the rear of the boot and he let out a grunt of pain mixed with frustration. Eames leaned over and frantically tried the latch himself, but got his own burned palm for his troubles.

“Okay, back to two problems. But on the upside, one of them is a new problem. And its always nice to experience new things. Like this unexpected roadtrip. That’s probably going to end in our deaths. Oh fuck, I’m getting déjà vu.”

Arthur kicked him in the shoulder and rolled over in defeat.

*

Sammy had watched curiously as Eames made absolutely no attempt to needle, flirt or smirk at the slim man who’d accompanied him into her garage. She didn’t get it, since the guy was both handsome and deadly serious and usually that was exactly the kind of food Eames liked to play with. At least, she didn’t get it until the third man with them said:

“We’re both connecting through Addis Adiba and Germany, from there I’m taking the train to Paris and Arthur will head back to Chicago.”

Sammy snapped her gaze to Eames and widened her eyes in delight. She didn’t mouth Arthur’s name but she didn’t have to, since Eames narrowed his eyes and they had a silent conversation about it.

_So… That’s Arthur._

_Don’t._

_Oh, but I really want to._

_Please._

During this the Arthur in question had taken out a notebook and been waving it at Eames, without getting a response. He wrote something down, moved to stand right in between them, and jabbed a finger at the page. Sammy peered around his narrow shoulders to see what he’d written.

_OI DICKHEAD_

_PAY ATTENTION_

Sammy allowed herself a giant grin and waggled her eyebrows. Arthur was one of the rare people who were completely impervious to Eames’s charms.

Eames' stilted behaviour suddenly made _so much sense._

*

When she popped open the boot of the piece of shit car Eames had abandoned in her garage the week before, it pulling horrible focus from the delectable 1965 Aston Martin she’d lined up for a businessman in Nairobi, she took a moment to enjoy it. Admittedly the life of crime suited her, but she was well aware fencing cars was no comparison to whatever it was Eames and his associates did for a living. After a short period in her life of people trying to kill her (thank you, enemies of mafiosa ex-husband, now RIP (enemies _and_ ex)) nowadays the most she risked was the occasional incompetent Mombasa police officer drifting into her work place, soon bribed to walk back out again. Life was good: she had her own business and was in charge of her own life once again and in a lot of ways she owed Eames for that. Knowing a generous master forger who sorted her out with a new identity, bank account, loan for the garage and Kenyan citizenship had done wonders for her being able to start a new life.

Having acknowledged the debt she owed him, Sammy nevertheless, was not going to look the particular gift horse _that was Arthur_ in the mouth. She was grateful, but she wasn’t a saint.

“Hello gentlemen” she said, as two bleary passengers blinked up at her. They were both dishevelled and pale and Arthur looked a little singed. She held his gaze and frowned. “If you’ve finished snuggling with my husband, you owe me $25,000 for the vintage car you just blew up.”

It was immeasurably glorious to watch Eames close his eyes in despair, whilst his associate went even paler, opened then shut his mouth, then seemed to find the floor of the trunk very very interesting.

“Thanks for getting us out, Sammy. I owe you” Eames said.

“Let’s call it even.”

He nodded. Sammy saw him glance quickly at Arthur then back again. There was a hell of a story there and once all this had calmed down she was going to get it out of him or die trying.

“What happened to Carliana?”

“Makalani’s favourite wrench, Okeyo’s knife and your other American friend’s right hook. Surprisingly spry for a guy who looks like he teaches Art History.”

“Where are they now?”

Sammy looked at her watch. “Your man’s probably back at the garage so I’d go ahead and tell him to meet you at the airport. I’d guess the others are probably in Wanjala’s walk-in freezer. You remember Wanjala? Has that great Nyman Chona place around the corner? Always better to deposit waste in the sea at night, I’m told.” She looked Arthur for disapproval but found none. “I’m assuming you have no complaints.”

“No complaints” Eames said, breathing out what seemed like a long held in sigh. “Then I guess it’s finally over. Arthur, you can, uh, go home.”

Arthur gave a small nod and started fussing with his suit. Sammy had clocked that it was an expensive suit when he’d first come into the garage. Now it was covered in engine oil and muck and all rumpled, the tie (who wears a tie in Kenya?!) was wonky. In fact, even Eames looked more rumpled than usual, and that was saying something. 

They _kind of_ looked like they’d been rolling around together in the trunk of a car and had just been caught. Sammy smirked and threw Arthur the keys.

“Anyway. Okeyo was right behind us so he should be here…” she looked out at the dirt track where a vehicle was approaching. “Right about now. Eames and I can hitch a lift back with him. You best be going if you’re going to make your flight.” She extended a hand and helped Eames out of the trunk. Once back on his feet he stretched and rubbed his face. Arthur followed suit and drifted over to the driver’s side. He peered into the passenger area and noticed the bags.

“Yep. Luggage and everything. You can’t beat the service at Sammy’s Car Emporium.”

Arthur politely extended his hand, but not before glancing unsubtly between her and Eames for about the hundredth time. He started to say something but no sound came out. He gestured to his throat then looked over at Eames for assistance.

“ He says 'Thank you, for all your help.' And he's sorry about the Aston Martin.”

She shrugged, then patted Arthur on the shoulder. Oh there was so much mileage in this. “I like you. So you don’t have to pay me back all in one go.” She then turned to Eames, who was fiddling with his poker chip and looked like he was going to say something to Arthur once she was done but also like he sort of wanted to scarper. There was a super awkward _something_ in the air and Sammy relished the hours she was going to get needling Eames about it later. Starting now.

She slipped her hand into his and started leading him towards her colleague’s car, now parked up and ready to take them back to the city. “Eames" she said, loud enough for Arthur to hear, "I’ll leave it with you to arrange how your boyfriend pays me back.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mexico City, Osaka

Arthur travelled to Mexico two weeks later to meet with Woodruff from Cobol Enterprises. It was an uneventful trip and he did not stay to do any sightseeing, preferring instead to eat and sleep in the featureless corporate hotel, travel to another corporate hotel for the meeting, then fly back to Chicago. The only detour from this was when he was popped into an abarroteria and asked in wheezy Spanish for some cigarettes but ended up leaving instead with a bag of tea leaves the disapproving owner had thrust upon him. He brewed it up in his hotel room using the little kettle, staring at it mindlessly whilst he waited for it to finish shuddering to completion, and tried to do the statistics on what percentage of his kettle usage was normal sized, well-adjusted-human-being home type vs little sized, itinerant-lonely, away type.

He sipped the strange smelling, soothing tea in bed, its alchemy working wonders for his still fragile throat, and did not text anyone.

*

In Osaka airport three months later whilst he was waiting for Cobb’s luggage to emerge from the carousel, his own piled neatly at his feet, Arthur idly fished his phone from his pocket. He had a message from an unknown number.

_How do you get your cat to sit on your lap?_

He turned it back off again.

*

_Are there certain kinds of trousers cats just inherently prefer?_

_I ask because you own both a cat and a significant amount of trousers._

Arthur put his phone back in his jacket and resumed watching Mr Kaneda play with his daughters in the Osaka castle lawn area. Kaneda was the chief engineer for Proclus Corporation, and it was he that Arthur, Cobb and- unfortunately- Nash, were going to perform extraction on in a week’s time. He seemed, going from what Arthur could glean off the back of a fortnight’s surveillance, a nice enough guy, and he once again cursed that some of the jobs Cobb got him involved doing less than nice things to people like that. Still, once they’d got the info they could be rid of the South African thugs that Woodruff had insisted accompany them, and leave Japan. Osaka was pleasant enough in early Spring but already the heat was settling into the air and making him want to ditch his jacket. Plus, everything was just slightly harder without a Japanese speaker on the team. Arthur had eaten at the same so-so ramen place every evening for the last week because he had muddled through a different menu at a different establishment early in his stay and ended up accidentally eating octopus- which although delicious, made him feel very uneasy. Last year Eames had read not one but two books about them and during a job in Argentina had gone on and on about how they could dream so had refused on moral grounds to even sit at the same table. At the time Arthur had plastered ‘apex carnivore’ onto his face and tucked in, enjoyably ignoring the judgemental stare boring into him.

Now he missed Chicago pizza and a cool bottle of Daisy Cutter Pale Ale from the brewery around the corner from his apartment. He missed being able to drift aimlessly around a bookstore and read the first paragraphs of novels he was never going to have time to read in their entirety, but suspected Eames might have read so he didn’t have to worry about that anyway. It was so weird Eames was a bookworm. He even used bookmarks. _Jesus._

He directed his thoughts back to the extraction coming up. 

It was fine.

Kaneda would give them the information and he could go home.

*

It was not fine.

Kaneda didn’t know the password to the file and Cobb desperately lashed them to a new, worse job extracting it from the head of the corporation himself, Saito. He and Nash shot off to Venezuela to get some background information on Saito’s mistress, whilst Arthur dejectedly threw away three months’ worth of work and tried to motivate himself to dig into the new task at hand.

But first he ate another bowl of overly familiar ramen, got incredibly wasted, did karaoke with some Canadian Postgrad biologists who were over for an international conference about moss, and ended up drunk-texting the married forger he had pointedly (“ _cos I’m a point man, ha, yes bartender I will have another shots, please and thank you”)_ been ghosting for the last three months.

*

_I don’t have a significant amount of trousers. I have a normal person’s amount._

_Bcause I am a normal person_

_Moses are amazing_

_*mosses*_

_I met some moss scientists. I aksed them how many they had and I fall well into the mean_

_Trouser snot moss_

_I have no moss. They have all the mosssss._

_Pants._

_I don’t have a signal cunt amount of PANTS._

_PANTS_

Which, okay, bad but not terrible. What _was_ terrible was following that up by dialling and leaving a message.

And the message just being Arthur panting down the phone, a sound that could either be interpreted as nonsense, or- which was much more likely and calamitously worse- like he was doing something else entirely and he wanted Eames to hear him doing it. 

The married forger, unsurprisingly, did not immediately respond.

*

Arthur woke in a bathtub covered in a blanket, wearing his shirt and boxers but nothing else. His head felt exactly like the opposite of soft, cushioning moss, which was a simile so out there it took Arthur several more minutes of slumped pain to understand why he had gone for it in the first place.

A vaguely familiar face popped their head around the door.

“Ah, you’re awake” the guy said. “Thank god. I have to pee and this was going to get awkward.”

Arthur blinked a few times and tentatively manoeuvred his head off the side of the bath. Everything hurt.

“Shit. What happened?”

“Booze happened. Also, I think maybe you made out with my colleague. Since your trousers are on the floor of the lounge.”

“Pants” Arthur corrected, automatically, then froze.

“SHIT.”

The guy frowned and rubbed his face, obviously also feeling worse for wear. “What’s up?”

Ignoring the wave of nausea, Arthur began hauling himself to his feet. “SHITTING Fuck. I need to check my phone.”

The other man shrugged. “Maybe it’s in your trousers?” he offered, edging out of the way as the point man steered himself into the shared space of the apartment.

Arthur’s phone was not in his trousers or pants. He looked warily at the closed door of another bedroom and tried to gently nudge his memory into recalling (unvividly please, please) which of the scientists he’d ‘experimented’ with last night.

Just as he was summoning the nerve to knock on the door a woman appeared from the kitchen, a piece of toast dangling from her mouth. She stopped when she saw him and withdrew the bread so she could speak.

“Morning” Arthur said, awkwardly.

“Hi.”

Arthur took a deep breath and waved an apologetic hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“Jenny.”

“Jenny…”

“I did Life on Mars.”

Arthur nodded, a vague recollection emerging. “And, uh, did you _do_ anything else?”

God that was unsubtle.

Arthur gestured to his feeble, scantily clad form.

Jenny laughed.

“No. I’m with Ken. He’s the guy peeing.”

Arthur glanced back at the closed door.

“And don’t worry.” Jenny continued “Bobby says you didn’t get very far anyway. So your modesty is still intact, if that’s what your worried about, Mr Accountant Man.”

Arthur let relief flood his body. He didn’t remember a Bobby at all, so maybe she/he was another biologist they met up with when Arthur was already way too gone. Nevertheless, the knowledge that he was too drunk to have done anything much was an embarrassment he’d take over the alternative.

“Guess I was too drunk to take off anything beyond my trousers” he joked.

Jenny smirked and flopped down on the couch. “Oh no man, you wanted those trousers off so you could post them. It was pretty funny. You were all like “how much will this cost to post overseas? It’s very important he gets these. Paramount.” She laughed at the memory. “You kept saying paramount. And also, you were like “you’re all scientists, you know how much things weigh.” Why would we know how much things weigh? Do you even know what science is?”

_Fucking hell._

Arthur was supposed to be organising the details of the Saito job. He should’ve spent the night going over bullet train timetables and reading up on intel about Saito and most pressingly trying to find a native speaker in the dreamshare community he could get to run the PASIV when the rest of the team were under. He should not have been gadding about Osaka with some students like he was ten years younger and fancy-free.

Arthur had enough of an understanding of his own personality to know he was the opposite of fancy-free.

Also, trying to post his clothes to Eames was the act of a madman.

So, there was that to add to his psych-profile.

_Fucking holy hell._

For the hundredth time he wished Mal was still alive.

She would pat his flattened down from passing out in a bathtub hair, make him some coffee and tell him funny stories about when her father was in the dreamshare business. She wouldn’t care he was in his boxer shorts and hungover to high heaven. She would let him whine and complain and then peel a satsuma for him and make him eat it.

_God he missed her._

“Your phone’s probably in there” Jenny said, waving the toast at the bedroom door. “So, you know, off you go.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Osaka, Paris, International Waters

Arthur turned himself off and on again: in that he went under, set fire to all his Italian hand-stitched shirts in a dumpster fire, then shot himself in the head. He wasn’t usually prone to dramatics, and obviously the real shirts were fine (he gave those to the Goodwill instead) but needs must. He had been acting out of character for a while now and needed to reboot the Old Arthur, the Arthur who was meticulous and in control, who got the job done, who could be relied upon. If Cobb was ever to get back to his kids _that_ Arthur needed to start showing up for work again.

He bought new shirts, Japanese this time, which were fine for his narrow shoulders anyway, and a new suit. And a new watch. And changed his aftershave. He upgraded his gun to a newer model and stopped smoking (again.) He swam in the hotel pool every morning at 5:30am and ate a nutritional breakfast at 6:15 prompt every single day.

He sent Eames an apology of sorts that he hoped would curtail any follow-up correspondence.

_Please ignore the texts- most recent job went sideways and decided alcohol was solution. Everything back on track now. Appreciate your understanding. A._

_Also, the voice message._

Twenty four hours later, Eames sent a two word reply.

_Voice messages_

Arthur spent ten lengths of the hotel pool evaluating what it could mean, attempting to draw any conclusion but the obvious one. Unfortunately, his phone records confirmed it: he had left three messages, but fatally, could only remember one.

For good measure, he also changed his number.

*

He vetted a young local guy in the local dreamshare community who could run the PASIV for them when they were under.

He turned the screws on Nash until the architect stopped slacking off and started producing a viable design for Arthur to dream Saito into. It was spacious and elegant, full of sumptuous gilt and black lacquer and oriental lighting, exotic and unfamiliar and exactly the change of environment Arthur hadn’t realised he’d needed up until now. The palace reflected Saito’s view of himself as a king, but it also suited Old Arthur’s desire for explicit artifice. He deftly avoided noting it was the exact opposite of domestic, lived in, familiar. 

He disposed of two Cobol agents who had mistakenly thought to loiter around the hotel looking for morsels they could feed back to Woodruff.

He headed off an almighty spiral from Cobb on his and Mal’s anniversary by packing him into a car and driving him out of the city away from anywhere that sold anything stronger than rice wine.

He finished reading Infinite Jest and promptly resolved never to read anything written by a white man in his 30s and described as a ‘tour de force’ ever again.

He bought a new moleskin since he’d lost his last one somewhere in Mombasa.

He got shot in the knee by a projection of Mal, then in the head by Cobb, then awoke first in a small apartment in Venezuela, then on a bullet train just outside Kyoto completely calm and focussed and already planning an exit strategy.

He felt himself again. This had probably been his mid-life crisis (a little early, but then again, he did work in a high-fatality industry) and he was satisfied he had correctly identified it and weathered its strange storms. Admittedly it had come in an unexpected form (stubbled, sartorially unkempt, _far far too clever for his own good_ ) but then again, Arthur had on more than one occasion been accused of “having no imagination” (by said unexpected form.)

Back to business. 

*

Nash sold them out, Saito, bewilderingly, offered them a new job double-crossing Cobol, Cobb agreed to attempt Inception against Arthur’s strongly-worded protests and speech about elephants, and he found himself in Paris.

“The city of love” Cobb said.

“The city of our current employment” Arthur corrected.

Cobb shrugged and they walked on down the cobbled lane that led to Arthur’s apartment: he kept a healthy property portfolio (well, he had this, his home in Chicago and a log cabin in a forest somewhere not on any maps.) “I’m going to see Miles this afternoon about getting us a new architect.”

Arthur nodded. “I’m going to check out a warehouse I think we can use as our base. Rendezvous back at mine after we’re done? Once we’ve picked a chemist then that’ll be the team assembled.”

He heard Cobb began to say something, but the extractor must have changed his mind.

“What?” Arthur asked.

Cobb shook his head. “Nothing.” He gestured around them to the quaint buildings and delightful comings and goings of the city. “Ah, Paris.”

*

Arthur very quickly discovered what the unabridged utterance was going to have been, when a week later they had a brief and terrible conversation that went like this:

“I’m going to visit Eames.”

“Eames? No. He’s in Mombasa. That’s Cobol’s back yard.”

“It’s a necessary risk.”

“There are plenty of good thieves.”

“We don’t just need a thief- we need a forger.”

*

“What’s this Eames guy like?” the new architect, Ariadne, asked idly, a couple of days after Cobb had left.

Arthur dragged the extra lawn chair back across the warehouse from where he’d positioned it five minutes ago. Away from the windows was probably better.

“He’s the best at what he does.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“No.” He reconsidered. “Yes. Don’t build a desert.”

She frowned. “A desert? Why?”

Arthur finished repositioning the furniture. “Just don’t.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

Arthur folded his arms and scrutinised the newest member of the team.

“Yeah” he eventually added ambiguously. “Don’t let him kiss you.”

Her eyebrows shot up and she laughed. “Is he likely to want to kiss me?”

_Who knows what Eames wants._ Arthur told himself.

*

Eames woke up alone on Saito’s private jet. Cobb, Yusuf and their new employer were probably back in the dining area talking about the job.

Occasionally Eames woke up next to Arthur, and that was how he knew what joy was- real, private, joy.

Arthur, who was a complicated, adversarial, uptight, ridiculous human being who almost seemed to go out of his way to avoid situations that would encourage his dimples to emerge. And who didn’t particularly like being around Eames.

This, for Eames, had over the years, and various locations, become a niggling problem. Because as an act of self-preservation Eames had forced himself into forging a casually indifferent version of himself pretty much five minutes into properly meeting him for the first time (Cobb’s point man had punched him in the face for the Oslo incident and so the first time he woke up next to Arthur was then. Arthur scowled down at him as he lay prone on the floor of the warehouse. Eames blinked and had taken a moment to look at those ruthless, narrowed eyes and have an epiphany.

_Oh. It's you. You're it for me._

Then Arthur had vindictively kicked him hard in the balls and Eames wondered if maybe he was into S&M afterall because the pain was astounding but Arthur was, well, now there was Arthur.)

END OF PART ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. Part 2 will cover the Inception Job.


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